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Braden vs Brady

American parents have registered 98,908 Bradys since 1880, against 46,512 Bradens. Brady is still ahead, with 1,123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Braden 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 2000, when Braden had 1,755 and Brady had 1,919.

Side by side

  Braden Brady
Total US births 46,51298,908
Most in one year 3,0585,015
Babies in 2025 1831,123
Estimated living today 45,00094,000
Median age today 2020
Peak year 20052007
Best rank 133rd boys93rd boys
Rank in 2025 1,152nd321st
First recorded 19161883
Girls / boys 277 / 46,2352,138 / 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.

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 Braden Brady
England and Wales 517865
France 15320
Scotland 20120
Ireland 1263
Northern Ireland 611

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: Braden and Brady.