Kevin: Meaning of Baby Name Kevin

About the Name Kevin

Kevin descends from the Irish Gaelic Caoimhín, a diminutive of caomh meaning "gentle," "beautiful," or "beloved" — yielding "gentle one" or "handsome one." The name's Irish anchor is Saint Kevin of Glendalough (c. 498–618), the Irish hermit-monk who founded the famous monastic settlement at Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland — which became one of the major medieval Irish religious centers and continues today as a major pilgrimage site.

Kevin was almost entirely confined to Ireland until the 20th century, when Irish-American immigration carried it into mainstream American naming. The name's mid-20th-century American boom was substantial: Kevin held the US top-15 boys' rank from 1962 through 1985 — over two decades of top-tier American popularity, partly through the cultural impact of bearers like American actor Kevin Costner (born 1955, Dances with Wolves, The Bodyguard) and the broader Catholic-American naming tradition.

Other notable bearers include American actor Kevin Bacon (whose six-degrees-of-separation game made his surname semi-mythic in American pop culture), American basketball player Kevin Durant (NBA superstar through the 2010s and 2020s), and British actor Kevin Kline (Oscar winner, A Fish Called Wanda). Kevin has receded from peak popularity since 2000 but remains in steady use. The appeal is its compact Irish warmth — two short syllables, soft consonants, distinctly Celtic without obscurity, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Kev (the dominant modern form) and the rare Kevy each occasionally appear; the original Irish Caoimhín remains in use in Ireland. There are no significant international variants since the name's spread is essentially Irish-to-international.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Kevin

1,167

Irish baby names in our dictionary

705

Irish male names

246

5-letter K-names in our dictionary

476

K-male names total

1949–2025

years of US SSA records (77 total)

1,174,183

total US births named Kevin (all years)

US Popularity History (1949–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Kevin dropped 64 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#157 in 2020 → #221 in 2025).

Annual US births named Kevin by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1963 with 30,611 boys named Kevin (boy rank #11 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #221 for boys (1,628 US births). That's 210 places below its 1963 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.

Where in the US Is Kevin 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 Kevin the strongest states are Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Maryland	#109	563
2	Delaware	#111	105
3	District of Columbia	#114	112
4	Florida	#116	1,894
5	New Jersey	#118	871
6	California	#120	4,006
7	Massachusetts	#121	594
8	New York	#122	1,725
9	Alaska	#134	42
10	Texas	#139	2,881

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	West Virginia	#275	54
2	Idaho	#259	77
3	Utah	#258	196
4	Wisconsin	#256	244
5	Oregon	#254	180
6	South Dakota	#248	17
7	North Dakota	#246	17
8	Mississippi	#246	136
9	Missouri	#245	286
10	Montana	#240	22

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kevin in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Kevan	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Keven	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Keveon	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevinn	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevion	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevis	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevon	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevron	Handsome Child. Variant Of Kevin.	Male	Irish
Kevyn	Gentle	Male	Celtic

Famous People Named Kevin

4 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Kevin.

Kevin Garnett — Basketball Player (1976)
Kevin James — Movie Actor (1965)
Kevin Nealon — Comedian (1953)
Kevin Smith — TV Actor (1970)

Browse more famous Kevins and similar first names →

Looking for names like Kevin?

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.

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Compare Kevin to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kevin against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Kevin vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Kevin vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Kevin vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Kevin vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Kevin vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Kevin vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Kevin vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Kevin vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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