This anglicized form of the Irish surname Ó Cianáin began to be used as a first name in the 1940s. So, Keenan means ‘descendent of Cianán’, with this Irish first name meaning ‘ancient’ or ‘enduring’.
Keenan is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Keenan 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, Keenan ranks 860. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 1 were named Keenan. In the entire USA, approximately 14,310 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Keenan. That is 0.00 % of all living Americans.
This anglicized form of the Irish surname Ó Cianáin began to be used as a first name in the 1940s. So, Keenan means ‘descendent of Cianán’, with this Irish first name meaning ‘ancient’ or ‘enduring’.
Keenan was... a quite fashionable name during the 1990s.
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 Keenan 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 Keenan 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 Keenan, you can simply say:
Koala
Elephant
Elephant
Nut
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Keenan
Keenan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
K
E
E
N
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
N
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. Keenan sounds like this:
