Mckenna
- Pronunciation
- [M-cke-nna]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Son Of Kenneth.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Mckenna
Mckenna is a Scottish-Irish patronymic surname descending from the Gaelic Mac Cionaodha, meaning "son of Cionaodh" — Cionaodh being an Old Gaelic personal name from cion (love, affection) plus a separate root. The Mc-spelling without the A is essentially a 21st-century American invention, while the more traditional Mackenna or McKenna spellings have older Scottish-Irish use.
Mckenna's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, part of the broader American taste for Scottish-Irish surnames as girls' first names alongside Mackenzie and McKenzie. The name has been used predominantly for girls in modern American naming.
Mckenna climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2008 and the top 200 since. Notable bearers include American actress Mckenna Grace (born 2006, the young American actress who appeared in Captain Marvel, I, Tonya, and The Haunting of Hill House) and contemporary American athletes. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the popular Mc/Mac- prefix family (Mckenna, Mckenzie, Mckayla), and the in-built Scottish-Irish heritage. Three flowing syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. Common nicknames Mac, Kenna (the dominant short form), and the rare Mackie each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings McKenna, MacKenna, and Makena (Hawaiian, with overlapping but distinct meaning) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Scottish Gaelic Mac Cionaodha.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mckenna
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Mckenna by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2002 with 1,795 girls named Mckenna (girl rank #177 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #410 for girls (758 US births). That's 233 places below its 2002 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 Mckenna 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 Mckenna the strongest states are Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #108 | 15 |
| 2 | Maine | #131 | 72 |
| 3 | New Hampshire | #140 | 64 |
| 4 | Montana | #148 | 36 |
| 5 | Alaska | #162 | 19 |
| 6 | South Dakota | #167 | 44 |
| 7 | North Dakota | #180 | 59 |
| 8 | Delaware | #186 | 34 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #188 | 556 |
| 10 | Hawaii | #192 | 18 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mckenna in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Mckenna?
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 Mckenna to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mckenna against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).