Makenna
Feminine · “son of Cionaodh”
Makenna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 33,741 girls against 8 boys since 1880.
Makenna is the smoothed-out American spelling of McKenna, an Irish surname that stepped forward into first-name use and never went back. Dropping the c gives it a clean phonetic run — three syllables, the stress in the middle, nothing in it a stranger has to puzzle over. It arrives with Kenna already tucked inside.
How old is the name Makenna?
Makenna first appears in US birth records in 1982 — 43 years ago. The typical Makenna alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 33,500 people named Makenna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Makenna most popular?
Makenna peaked in 2010, reaching #201 nationally. Today it ranks #593, 392 places below that high. See the whole 2010 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aodh to Makenna
The story of Makenna
The name begins as a patronymic in Ireland — Mac Cionaoith, borne by a family long associated with Truagh in County Monaghan — and traveled with Irish emigrants into English-speaking records as McKenna. In the late twentieth century American parents began using Irish and Scottish Mac- surnames as girls' first names, and McKenna moved with that current. Makenna is what happened next: the capital K and the apostrophe-adjacent c smoothed away, leaving a spelling that reads exactly as it sounds. The same sequence of sounds exists independently as Makena, a girl's name used in Kenya and the name of a stretch of coast on Maui.
Meaningscholars disagree
"son of Cionaodh," from the Irish surname Mac Cionaoith
The surname layer is clear enough: Mac Cionaoith means "son of Cionaodh." What Cionaodh itself means is where scholars part ways — one reading takes it as cion, "love" or "affection," joined to Aodh, the old Irish name tied to fire; another simply glosses the whole thing as "born of fire" through Aodh alone. Both readings are seriously held, and neither has won.
How the name formed
- Aodh
- Cionaodh
- Mac Cionaoith
- McKenna
- Makenna
Related forms: Mac Cionaoith · McKenna · Mackenna · Makena
Pronouncing Makenna
muh-KEN-uh
Stress falls on the middle syllable. The first is a light, unstressed muh — not "may" — which is the one thing occasionally worth correcting.
Nicknames for Makenna
High
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
- 1982
- Most girls named
- 20051,619 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #201reached in 2010
- Change vs 2024
- −16.0%495 in 2025, from 589
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.
Makenna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mac Cionaoith in Irish — related form
- McKenna in English — spelling variant
- Mackenna in English — spelling variant
- Makena in Swahili — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Ohio.
Makennas among us
people named Makenna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 3,247 born in 2025 was named Makenna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Makenna
- #593
- Makenna on the 2025 chart
- #449
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Makenna went to 495 girls in 2025, but Makena, 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 — 144 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 2,626 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 3,247 for Makenna 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 Leigh test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Makenna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Leigh climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Leigh's path sketches the road Makenna is walking now.
Makenna 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 Makenna is headed
Makenna is easing off slowly — about 15% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High 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.
Makenna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Makenna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelling and sound match, so it survives being said aloud over a phone better than the McKenna and Mackenna forms.
- Comes with Kenna ready-made — a short form that also stands alone as a given name, giving a formal and an informal option from day one.
- Sits inside a sound family Americans already know from Mackenzie and McKenna, so it is grasped instantly even by people meeting it for the first time.
- Rests on a documented Irish surname line traceable to County Monaghan, giving it real history behind a modern spelling.
- Used across the country rather than pooled in one region.
- It competes with McKenna, Mackenna, Mckenna and Makena, so expect to spell it out fairly often — the payoff is that your version needs no explaining once written.
- Surname-into-first-name is a distinctly recent American naming habit, and the sound sits with a particular cohort. It reads modern rather than timeless, which some parents want and some don't.
- The meaning is honest but layered: it comes through a family name, not a word, and the root behind that family name has never been settled. If a clear one-line meaning matters to you, this one will always need a paragraph.
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What they receive
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Makenna
Feminine · #593 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Makennas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 33,500 people named Makenna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Makenna?
- Makenna is the most-used spelling in US records — 495 of the 612 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Makena, Mackenna and Makennah.
- How popular is the name Makenna in 2025?
- Makenna ranks #593 among US girl names in 2025, with 495 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Makenna?
- About 1 in every 3,247 US girls born in 2025 was named Makenna — 495 in all.
- Will my child share the name Makenna with classmates?
- Makenna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Makenna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Reyna#594 · Paris#592 · Mina#595 · Avianna#595 · Tiana#595 · Halle#595 · Meilani#590 · Marigold#590
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Makenna? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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