Kadence
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Rhythmic
- Origin
- Latin
About the Name Kadence
Kadence is a phonetic respelling of Cadence, an English vocabulary name derived from the Latin cadentia, meaning a falling or flowing rhythm — the same root that gives music its cadence, the pattern of beats and resolutions that gives a melody shape and finality. The name belongs to the late-twentieth-century trend of using musical and rhythmic vocabulary as given names, alongside choices like Harmony, Melody, and Lyric. Kadence, with its K initial, is a purely orthographic variant of Cadence with no independent etymology of its own. The recorded variant is Kaydence.
In SSA data, Kadence first entered the female top-1000 in 2003 and peaked at #344 in 2005, accumulating 10,133 top-1000 births across its fifteen-year tracked run. The name's rapid rise to its peak within just two years of chart entry suggests strong early momentum, driven by the broader popularity of musical concept names in that era. By 2016 it ranked #700 with 411 births, eased to #715 with 402 births in 2017, and reached its final tracked appearance at #893 with 302 births in 2018.
The recorded variant Kaydence offers an elaborated form that was roughly contemporaneous in American use. Kadence's appeal lay in its combination of a bright, airy concept — musical rhythm, flow, movement — with a name length and sound that fit cleanly into the early-2000s feminine naming aesthetic. Its compact three-syllable structure, clear meaning, and musical associations give it a warmth and creativity that parents drawn to arts-inspired names continue to find appealing.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Kadence
US Popularity History (2003–2018)
Annual US births named Kadence by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2005 with 911 girls named Kadence (girl rank #344 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2018, ranked #893 for girls (302 US births). That's 549 places below its 2005 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Kadence Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Kadence the strongest states are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arkansas | #289 | 36 |
| 2 | Oklahoma | #437 | 30 |
| 3 | Mississippi | #518 | 25 |
| 4 | Alabama | #553 | 71 |
| 5 | Kentucky | #588 | 45 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #619 | 35 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #644 | 52 |
| 8 | Georgia | #648 | 154 |
| 9 | Colorado | #749 | 29 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #749 | 120 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kadence in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaydence | Musical. | Female | American |
Looking for names like Kadence?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Kadence to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kadence against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).