A variant of Kendal, an English place name meaning "valley of the River Kent."
Kendale is an elaborated variant of Kendall, an English place name and surname that traces its origin to the town of Kendal in Cumbria, in the north of England. The toponym derives from the Old Norse 'Kenet-dale,' meaning 'valley of the River Kent,' the Kent being a swift Cumbrian river whose name may itself derive from a pre-Celtic root meaning 'high' or 'bright.' Kendal was historically famous for its production of a coarse green woolen cloth — Kendal Green — that appears in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, when Falstaff comically invokes 'three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green.'
As a given name, Kendall migrated from surname to first name in the classic Anglo-American tradition, and the Kendale spelling adds a slightly more formal, Latinate visual weight to the name. The -dale ending evokes the pastoral English landscape, valleys and waterways, giving the name a grounded, earthy quality. It has been used for both boys and girls, sitting comfortably in the modern American tradition of nature-tinged, place-derived names.
Kendale occupies an interesting niche: familiar enough to be immediately pronounceable, distinctive enough to avoid the crowded mainstream. Its geographic roots connect it to a real and specific piece of English landscape history, and its open, rolling syllables give it an easy elegance on the tongue.