Makena
Feminine · “the happy one”
Makena is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 6,568 girls against 84 boys since 1880.
Makena reaches American records by at least three roads at once — a Kikuyu name from Kenya, a stretch of coast on Maui, and the Irish surname McKenna with its consonants smoothed away. All three are real, and they arrived close enough together that no one road owns it.
How old is the name Makena?
Makena first appears in US birth records in 1984 — 41 years ago. The typical Makena alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 6,500 people named Makena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Makena most popular?
Makena peaked in 2005, reaching #717 nationally. Today it ranks #2719, 2,002 places below that high. See the whole 2005 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Makena
Kikuyu names are given for circumstance and for lineage, and Makena is a settled one among them, carried by Kenyan women long before it appeared in American records. Makena on Maui is a separate word entirely, and the beach there is well enough known that the spelling arrived in the United States by that road too. Meanwhile McKenna, from the Irish Mac Cionaodha, was becoming a common American girls' name, and its softened spellings — Makenna, Mckenna, Makena — were multiplying. Three unrelated sources, one spelling: the honest account is that this name has more than one home.
Meaningscholars disagree
the happy one — in Kikuyu
In Kikuyu, spoken in central Kenya, Makena is a woman's name generally read as 'the happy one' or 'one who smiles', and it is in ordinary use there. Makena is separately a place on the south coast of Maui, a Hawaiian word for abundance. And in the United States the spelling also works as a simplification of McKenna, the Irish surname Mac Cionaodha. Which of the three a given Makena stands on is a family fact rather than a linguistic one.
Pronouncing Makena
mah-KAY-nah
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. Kikuyu and Hawaiian both open with a clean ah rather than the English uh. American English usually says muh-KEN-uh with a short e, which is the McKenna saying rather than either of the others.
Nicknames for Makena
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1984
- Most girls named
- 2005381 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #717reached in 2005
- Change vs 2024
- −35.1%63 in 2025, from 97
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Makena in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mākena in Hawaiian — spelling variant
- Mac Cionaodha in Irish — related form
- Makenna in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Washington.
Makenas among us
people named Makena are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 25,512 born in 2025 was named Makena
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Makena
- #2719
- Makena on the 2025 chart
- #449
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Makena went to 63 girls in 2025, but Makenna, Mackenna and Makennah are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 612, which makes it the 449th most-given girls’ name of the year — 2,270 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 2,626 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 25,512 for Makena itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lizabeth test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Makena's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lizabeth climbed just as high around 1958, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lizabeth's path sketches the road Makena is walking now.
Makena sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Makena is headed
Makena should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Makena beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Makena in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Genuinely at home in three unrelated traditions, so it is not borrowed from any single one.
- Simple letters, no silent ones, and easy to say once it has been heard.
- Kena and Mak are natural short forms that need no inventing.
- Makena, Makenna, Mckenna and Mackenzie all live in the same sound-space and get mixed up constantly.
- The two main pronunciations come from different sources, so the child will spend a lifetime correcting one of them.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Makena
Feminine · #2719 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Makenas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,500 people named Makena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Makena?
- Makena is one of 4 recorded spellings. Makenna is the more common one — 495 births in 2025 against 63 for Makena.
- How popular is the name Makena in 2025?
- Makena ranks #2719 among US girl names in 2025, with 63 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Makena?
- About 1 in every 25,512 US girls born in 2025 was named Makena — 63 in all.
- Will my child share the name Makena with classmates?
- Makena will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Makena
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ryver#2719 · Kaliana#2719 · Morrigan#2719 · Asher#2719 · Aditi#2719 · Carley#2719 · Betsy#2719 · Emy#2719
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Makena? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Makena and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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