Kendrick
- Pronunciation
- [Ken-drick]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Son Of Harry
- Origin
- Gaelic
About the Name Kendrick
Kendrick descends from the Old English/Welsh surname meaning "son of Henry" or possibly from the Welsh Cynwrig, composed of cyn (chief) and gwr (man, hero) — yielding "chief hero." The name has been used continuously across Welsh and English naming traditions for centuries, originally as a clan/territorial designation.
The name's overwhelming modern American cultural anchor is American rapper Kendrick Lamar (Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, born 1987, the iconic Compton-born American hip-hop artist whose career through 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d city and 2017's DAMN. made him one of the foundational figures of contemporary American music — and in 2018 became the first non-classical, non-jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music).
Kendrick's American climb has been substantial: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1985 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven primarily by African-American naming and the strong Kendrick Lamar cultural anchor. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Welsh-Old English heritage, and the popular two-syllable -ick ending family (Kendrick, Patrick, Dominick). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Anglo-Saxon and contemporary American with the strong Kendrick Lamar contemporary music cultural anchor. Common nicknames Ken (the dominant short form, casual and warm — also a popular standalone name on its own), Kenny, Drick, and the rare Kendi each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Kendrick, Kendric, and Kendryck have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Cynwrig (Welsh original) and the broader related Welsh family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Kendrick
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Kendrick by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2013 with 1,047 boys named Kendrick (boy rank #318 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #535 for boys (559 US births). That's 217 places below its 2013 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 Kendrick 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 Kendrick the strongest states are South Dakota, Rhode Island, District of Columbia.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | #208 | 20 |
| 2 | Rhode Island | #215 | 16 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | #243 | 16 |
| 4 | West Virginia | #301 | 40 |
| 5 | Maryland | #313 | 167 |
| 6 | Nebraska | #339 | 49 |
| 7 | Mississippi | #350 | 95 |
| 8 | Virginia | #354 | 226 |
| 9 | Kentucky | #359 | 121 |
| 10 | Alabama | #359 | 139 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona | #670 | 88 |
| 2 | Colorado | #623 | 77 |
| 3 | California | #574 | 487 |
| 4 | Washington | #554 | 126 |
| 5 | Michigan | #535 | 162 |
| 6 | Utah | #524 | 76 |
| 7 | Oregon | #506 | 44 |
| 8 | Texas | #505 | 560 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #503 | 96 |
| 10 | Illinois | #502 | 202 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kendrick in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Kendrick?
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 Kendrick to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kendrick against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).