'Kenton' probably means the farm of a man called Coena.
The name joins the Saxon personal name Coena to Old English tūn, a farm; Brent's local historians read it as the farm of the sons of Coena. The hamlet appears as Keninton in the early 1230s – sources give 1231 or 1232 – and the modern spelling Kenton is first recorded in 1596.