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Bracken vs Brady

American parents have registered 98,908 Bradys since 1880, against 618 Brackens. Brady is still ahead, with 1,123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bracken against Brady, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bracken Brady

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Brady has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1883 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1983, when Bracken had 15 and Brady had 529.

Side by side

  Bracken Brady
Total US births 61898,908
Most in one year 315,015
Babies in 2025 81,123
Estimated living today 60094,000
Median age today 2320
Peak year 19982007
Best rank 2,651st boys93rd boys
Rank in 2025 8,910th321st
First recorded 19711883
Girls / boys 0 / 6182,138 / 96,770

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Brackens alive today are over 23; half the Bradys are over 20. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Bracken Brady
England and Wales 163865
Scotland 3120

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Bracken and Brady.