Modern invented name, a stylized variation of Kenny or Kenai, with no well-established ancient etymology.
Kenay most likely traces its roots to the East African nation of Kenya, whose name in turn derives from Mount Kenya — called *Kirinyaga* in Kikuyu, meaning "place of brightness" or "mountain of whiteness," a reference to its snow-capped peak. When Kenya became an independent republic in 1963, its name entered global consciousness as a symbol of African self-determination and natural grandeur, and it began appearing as a given name — first in African-American communities as an expression of pride in African heritage, then more broadly. Kenay is a phonetic respelling of that geographic name, giving it a slightly more personal, less directly place-name feel.
The practice of drawing given names from African place names accelerated significantly in the United States during and after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when names like Kenya, Keana, and their variants became vehicles of cultural affirmation and reconnection with African identity. Kenya as a given name peaked in American usage in the 1970s through 1990s, producing dozens of spelling variants. Kenay sits in that creative tradition — the same sounds, slightly recontextualized, made more name-like through a shift in orthography.
There is also a possibility that Kenay intersects with or was independently inspired by Kenai, a city and river in Alaska whose name derives from the Kenaitze people, an Athabascan group — another geographic name that has occasionally migrated into personal use. Whatever its specific origin in any individual family, Kenay carries the character of names shaped by landscape and history, names that connect a child to a place that held meaning for those who chose it.