From German 'Kenner' meaning 'one who knows' or from an English place name.
Kenner began as a surname before making the slow migration to given name use that characterizes many English occupational and locational names. Its most likely origin lies in Middle English and Old French, where a 'conner' or 'kenner' was an official inspector or tester — typically someone who assayed the quality of goods, from ale to coin. The word shares a root with 'ken,' meaning to know or to understand, giving the name an undercurrent of expertise and discernment.
As a place name, Kenner appears in both Scotland and Louisiana, the latter a New Orleans suburb whose name derives from a nineteenth-century settler family. In surname form, Kenner was carried to America by various European immigrant groups, where it eventually gained modest use as a first name in the Southern and Midwestern United States — part of a wider tradition of honoring maternal family names by passing them forward as given names. The Kenner toy company, founded in Cincinnati in 1947 and famous for its Star Wars action figures, gave the name a pop-culture shimmer for anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 80s.
As a first name, Kenner occupies a confident niche: it sounds authentically masculine without being archaic, has the easy nickname 'Ken' available, and carries a subtle sense of authority rooted in its occupational meaning. It belongs to the same informal class as names like Brenner, Tanner, and Greer — surnames that became given names by sheer force of family loyalty and eventually stood on their own.