Kwanza — unisex name

What the Data Says About Kwanza

The Social Security Administration has registered 227 babies named Kwanza between 1971 and 1999, spanning 29 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Kwanza currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 1999. The name reached its historical peak in 1978, when 29 babies received it in a single year. Kwanza is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 42 additional births since 1972.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Kwanza performed strongest in the 1970s, accumulating 121 births during that ten-year window. Across the 3 decades of recorded activity, Kwanza shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Louisiana, which accounts for 10 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by . In total, SSA state-level files list Kwanza in 1 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Kwanza in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 227 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.