The history of your name

The KEEN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 17,320 1906 0.006 64
United States (1880 census) 5,109 1197 0.01 102
Change since 1880 +12211 -709 -0.004 -38
Other Countries
Australia 1,817 895 0.011 111
United Kingdom 8,010 765 0.017 174
Top States for KEEN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Florida 1,743 1227 0.011 109
Virginia 1,338 669 0.019 189
Texas 1,150 2161 0.006 55
Pennsylvania 863 1775 0.007 70
Tennessee 830 1110 0.015 146
Top States for KEEN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Delaware 159 889 0.020 203
Virginia 1,338 669 0.019 189
Tennessee 830 1110 0.015 146
Kentucky 567 1069 0.014 140
Mississippi 361 1232 0.013 127

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called KEEN live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called KEEN represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called KEEN in Florida than any other state, but you are more likely to find a KEEN by picking someone at random in Delaware than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of KEEN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the KEEN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the KEEN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of KEEN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 745 4.3
Mixed Race 227 1.31
White (Hispanic) 208 1.2
Asian/Pacific 116 0.67
Native American/Alaskan 92 0.53
White (Caucasian) 15,933 91.99

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the KEEN surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of KEEN in historical publications

Bold, eager, daring; bright, fair; or may be the same as Kean.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


KEEN. KEENE. Perhaps sometimes from sharpness of disposition ; but sometimes probabl)' the Irish O'Kean, sans 0'. Both Kene and Le Kene occur in H.R.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to KEEN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as KEEN.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for KEEN

The following words are slight variants of KEEN that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.