Kendyl is a modern spelling of Kendall, an English surname-name from a valley in Cumbria.
Kendyl is a modern variant spelling of Kendall, an English surname-turned-given-name derived from the town of Kendal in Cumbria, northern England. The town's name comes from the River Kent, with the Old Norse *dalr* (valley) appended: the valley of the Kent. Kendal was a thriving medieval wool town, famous for its distinctive coarse green cloth — "Kendal green" — that appears in Shakespeare's *Henry IV*, where Falstaff describes adversaries "in Kendal green."
The name thus carries a thread of English industrial and literary history. Kendall transitioned from surname to given name in the twentieth century and became popular for both boys and girls in the United States from the 1980s onward — part of the broad American fashion for surnames as first names. The spelling variant Kendyl emerged as parents sought to personalize the name or signal a feminine usage, the *-yl* ending functioning much as it does in Cheryl, Beryl, and Daryl — a soft, slightly unusual close that registers as distinctly feminine.
Kendyl sits in a sweet spot between familiar and individualized: it shares its sound with a well-known name but the spelling ensures it stands apart on paper. The name carries a modern, athletic quality — breezy and confident — while its deep etymological roots in an English river valley give it more history than its contemporary feel might suggest.