Keegan
- Pronunciation
- [Kee-gan]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Small And Fiery
- Origin
- Gaelic
About the Name Keegan
Keegan descends from the Old Irish Mac Aodhagáin meaning "son of Aodhagán" — Aodhagán being the Old Irish personal name diminutive of Aodh (fire). The name has been used continuously in Irish naming traditions for over a millennium, originally as a clan name and later transitioning to first-name usage.
Notable bearers include English soccer player Kevin Keegan (using Keegan as a surname, born 1951, the iconic former Liverpool and Hamburg striker and English national team manager); American actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key (born 1971, the American comedian and one half of Comedy Central's Key & Peele 2012–2015); contemporary American actor Keegan Allen; and the fictional Keegan of various contemporary novels.
Keegan's American climb is part of the broader 21st-century American taste for Irish-Gaelic boys' names alongside Liam, Aiden, and Killian. The name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1995 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2010 and the top 300 since. The name is also occasionally used for girls. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built Irish-Gaelic heritage, the popular two-syllable -an ending family (Keegan, Riley, Logan, Kieran), and the modern visual presence. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Celtic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Kee (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Gan each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Keagan, Keegan, and Kegan have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old Irish Mac Aodhagáin.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Keegan
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Keegan by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 1,707 boys named Keegan (boy rank #222 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #621 for boys (449 US births). That's 399 places below its 2007 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 Keegan Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Keegan the strongest states are New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hampshire | #191 | 53 |
| 2 | Maine | #205 | 34 |
| 3 | West Virginia | #227 | 92 |
| 4 | Mississippi | #283 | 105 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #290 | 191 |
| 6 | Ohio | #306 | 426 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #315 | 385 |
| 8 | Iowa | #316 | 121 |
| 9 | Idaho | #325 | 31 |
| 10 | Michigan | #325 | 307 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #847 | 229 |
| 2 | Texas | #691 | 352 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #633 | 91 |
| 4 | Florida | #617 | 273 |
| 5 | Washington | #603 | 127 |
| 6 | Arizona | #591 | 112 |
| 7 | Colorado | #588 | 88 |
| 8 | Louisiana | #553 | 109 |
| 9 | New York | #524 | 295 |
| 10 | Georgia | #493 | 226 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Keegan in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kegan | Son Of Egan | Male | Celtic |
Looking for names like Keegan?
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 Keegan to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Keegan against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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