Kendrick is an English and Welsh surname; it goes back to the Old English Cyneric, "royal power", and in Wales to Cynwrig, with a similar sense of "chief hero". Rapper Kendrick Lamar, the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize, has made the name widely known. In the United States Kendrick ranked number 459 in 2000, peaked at number 318 in 2013 and ranks number 535 among boys' names in 2025.