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NameCurve
Boys' name · 69,931 recorded births

Kent

#1,654 in the US in 2025

Where Kent stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#1,654boys’ names · US 2025

Kent was the 1,654th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 101 births.

peak 1962 · 2,587188019532025

Its moment was 1962, when 2,587 babies were given it. In 12 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

#1,654US rank, 2025 (boys)
101US births in 2025
#136its best US rank, in 1962
1962peak year — 2,587 births
69,322US births since 1885
609NZ births since 1960
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Kent'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. Kent was under the floor in 12 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 →

Kent in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.063125
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. Kent in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 32% as a share of boys' 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

Kent in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Kent has been registered 609 times since 1960, peaking in 1973 with 47 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.087173
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. Kent 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

Kent in England & Wales

Kent does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.

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
1890below floor<5
1900#1,3105
1910#98111
1920#66791
1930#459166
1940#216578
1950#1801,233
1960#1482,397
1970#2161,153
1980#356497
1990#488394
2000#773215
2010#1,323129
2020#1,423121

<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 Kent most often since 1885. 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
California6,672
Illinois4,730
Indiana3,391
Ohio3,375
Texas3,018
Utah2,884
Minnesota2,626
Iowa2,606
Michigan2,570
New York2,424

Questions about Kent

How popular is the name Kent?

Kent ranked #1,654 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 101 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Kent most popular?

Kent peaked in 1962, when 2,587 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Kent rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Kent has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-32%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1962, 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.