The English name Keegan derives from the Irish surnane Mac Aodhagáin, which means ‘son of Aodhagán’. This name is a double diminutive of Aodh, which means ‘fire’.
Keegan is a male first name. In some cases it's also given to girls.
The name Keegan isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Keegan ranks 314. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 6 were named Keegan. In the entire USA, approximately 36,977 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Keegan. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
The English name Keegan derives from the Irish surnane Mac Aodhagáin, which means ‘son of Aodhagán’. This name is a double diminutive of Aodh, which means ‘fire’.
What is a double diminutive? This is a grammatical form used in some languages to indicate a high degree of smallness or endearment. It is created by adding two suffixes, both of which express the concept of smallness or endearment, to a word.
Keegan is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Then, unexpectedly, Keegan cried out for attention, reaching its peak in popularity at #206 in our SmartGenius statistics in the year 2007. People over 50 probably didn't have classmates named Keegan, for there were many years in which not a single parent chose this first name for their son. Although it also has never been in the top 100 of most popular first names, Keegan seems to have been in vogue for a while, especially since the beginning of the new millennium.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Keegan was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
576 babies were named Keegan in 2022 - that's 1 in 310,435 newborn boys. With this number, the boys' name Keegan ranked 491 in our SmartGenius first name statistics in 2022, the most recent year for which records are available.
The name Keegan may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Keegan is apparently especially popular in Vermont. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 1,745 men in Vermont is called Keegan. In total, that’s 170 people who feel addressed when the name Keegan is shouted loudly across Vermont and who ensure that their name makes it to #227 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Keegan as the answer a total of 36,977 times. This places Keegan at #527 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Keegan as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter K is a real popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 7.9% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters J, A and D are more common for boys' names.
With six letters, the name Keegan is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 7.9% of all boys' names start with a K, this initial letter occurs more than twice as often as all 26 letters on average. Interesting detail: of all the boys’ names that begin with a K, Kenneth is the most common.
If your name is Keegan and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Keegan, you can simply say:
Koala
Elephant
Elephant
Goat
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Keegan
Keegan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
K
E
E
G
A
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
K
E
E
G
A
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Keegan sounds like this:
