Kendrick
Usually a spelling variant of Kenrick, itself an old personal-name surname, though some families may also reflect older local-name or scribal forms.
The #1,259 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,060 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Kendrick is generally treated as a variant of Kenrick. That name is usually explained as coming from an old personal name built from Germanic elements meaning something like “royal” and “ruler” or “power.” Older writers sometimes also linked forms like Kenwrick/Kenwright to Kendrick through spelling and pronunciation shifts, so the surname history is not always straightforward.
History
Nineteenth-century surname dictionaries often cross-reference Kendrick to Kenrick rather than treating it as an independent surname. The name appears in Britain in several spelling forms, and later surname standardization helped fix Kendrick as the common modern shape. In the United States it is established but relatively uncommon.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some early surname books noted that Kendrick could be a scribal or dialectal reshaping of Kenrick, showing how fluid English surname spellings once were.
From the historical record
“KENDLE. See Kendall. KENDRICK. See Kenrick. KENEL. KEN ELL. Probably the French surname Quesnel, an archaism for the oak-tree. KENIiSTON, The same as Kynaston. KENN. Parishes in cos. Devon and”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom