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Bradey vs Brandy

American parents have registered 108,861 Brandys since 1880, against 723 Bradeys. Brandy is still ahead, with 58 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bradey against Brandy, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bradey Brandy

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

Brandy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1942 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Bradey had 9 and Brandy had 53.

Side by side

  Bradey Brandy
Total US births 723108,861
Most in one year 426,963
Babies in 2025 under 558
Estimated living today 700105,000
Median age today 2344
Peak year 20021981
Best rank 2,504th boys41st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked3,067th
First recorded 19701942
Girls / boys 9 / 714106,559 / 2,302

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 Brandys alive today are over 44; half the Bradeys are over 23. That is 21 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 Brandy
England and Wales 641

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 Brandy.