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Girls' name · 101,574 recorded births

Kennedy

#85 in the US in 2025

Where Kennedy stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#85girls’ names · US 2025

Kennedy was the 85th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 2,933 births.

peak 2015 · 4,523188019532025

Its moment was 2015, when 4,523 babies were given it. In 16 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#85US rank, 2025 (girls)
2,933US births in 2025
#54its best US rank, in 2014
2015peak year — 4,523 births
93,663US births since 1957
243NZ births since 1996
160E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Kennedy's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Kennedy was under the floor in 16 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Kennedy in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0127253
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Kennedy in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 26% as a share of girls' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Kennedy in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Kennedy has been registered 243 times since 1996, peaking in 1998 with 20 births. It ranked #399 for girls in 2025 on 10 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.060119
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Kennedy in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Kennedy in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Kennedy was registered 160 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2020 with 34 births. It ranked #1,584 for girls in 2025 on 19 births.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.06.313
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Kennedy in England and Wales, 2019–2025
girlsboys

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1960below floor<5
1970below floor<5
1980#10,3925
1990#2,95738
2000#1392,390
2010#1112,833
2020#723,361

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Kennedy most often since 1957. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
Texas8,780
California6,938
Ohio4,925
Georgia4,487
Michigan4,340
Florida3,922
Illinois3,671
North Carolina3,625
Pennsylvania3,074
New York2,902

Questions about Kennedy

How popular is the name Kennedy?

Kennedy ranked #85 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 2,933 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Kennedy most popular?

Kennedy peaked in 2015, when 4,523 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Kennedy rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Kennedy has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-26%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2015, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.