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Bradey vs Brandon

American parents have registered 774,654 Brandons since 1880, against 723 Bradeys. Brandon is still ahead, with 1,326 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bradey against Brandon, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bradey Brandon

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

Brandon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Bradey had 9 and Brandon had 2,312.

Side by side

  Bradey Brandon
Total US births 723774,654
Most in one year 4229,724
Babies in 2025 under 51,326
Estimated living today 700742,000
Median age today 2332
Peak year 20021992
Best rank 2,504th boys6th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked261st
First recorded 19701914
Girls / boys 9 / 7144,145 / 770,509

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 Brandons alive today are over 32; half the Bradeys are over 23. That is 9 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Bradey Brandon
England and Wales 626,444

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: Bradey and Brandon.