Makena
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-ke-na]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Not recorded
- Origin
- English
Makena is a name traditionally given to a girl of English origin. Our sources do not preserve a single agreed-upon literal translation for this particular name, so we list its meaning as unrecorded rather than guess at one. Browse more English baby names or search the full library by meaning.
About the Name Makena
Makena is a warm, flowing name with strong associations to East African and Hawaiian sound worlds alike, and it shares a sunlit namesake in the Makena region on the southern coast of Maui. Its three open syllables — Ma-ke-na — give it a gentle, sunlit rhythm that travels easily and reads as both pleasantly exotic and entirely approachable. It is the kind of name that feels relaxed and bright, evoking warmth, shoreline, and ease.
That breezy, vowel-rich quality fits squarely within the modern preference for smooth, melodic girls' names that suggest openness and freedom. Makena carries a strong feeling of place and warmth without leaning on any heavy tradition, letting its sound do most of the work. It reads as fresh and unencumbered, a name that seems to carry a little sunshine and sea air with it wherever it goes.
As a girls' name, Makena first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2002 and reached its peak in 2005 at #718. It remained in the rankings through 2013, when it sat at #995, and across its tracked years it accounted for 3,331 births among the top-1000. The recorded variant Makenna offers a doubled-consonant spelling of the same gentle, sunlit sound, giving parents a slightly fuller-looking alternative on the page while preserving the same warm, three-syllable flow.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Makena
US Popularity History (2002–2013)
Annual US births named Makena by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2005 with 381 girls named Makena (girl rank #718 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2013, ranked #995 for girls (252 US births). That's 277 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 Makena 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 Makena the strongest states are Hawaii, Washington, Arizona.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | #137 | 41 |
| 2 | Washington | #615 | 61 |
| 3 | Arizona | #855 | 23 |
| 4 | Minnesota | #877 | 18 |
| 5 | California | #917 | 293 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #917 | 293 |
| 2 | Minnesota | #877 | 18 |
| 3 | Arizona | #855 | 23 |
| 4 | Washington | #615 | 61 |
| 5 | Hawaii | #137 | 41 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Makena in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Makenna | Happiness | Female | African |
Looking for names like Makena?
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 Makena to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Makena against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).