Kent
A surname that most often means “from Kent,” the historic English county.
The #778 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 6,965 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Kent is a habitational or regional surname for someone who came from the county of Kent in southeast England. The county name is ancient; writers usually connect it with a Brittonic root meaning a borderland or edge-country, later recorded in Latin and Old English forms. As a surname, it simply identified a person as “of Kent” or “the Kentish one.”
History
The name appears widely in medieval records as people moved away from Kent and were identified by their place of origin. In some cases it may also overlap with surnames formed from local place-names or with the adjective Kentish. The surname spread throughout England and later into North America and other English-speaking regions.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Lower explicitly notes Kentish as the adjective for a native of Kent, and treats Kent as one of the classic county-based English surnames.
From the historical record
“sex. KENT. See Counties, Names of. KENTISH. A native of Kent — cognate with Cornish, Devenish, Sco. KENTON Parishes, &c., in cos, Somer- set, Suffolk, Northumberland, and Devon. KES”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom