Humanverse

Bradie vs Brandon

American parents have registered 774,654 Brandons since 1880, against 783 Bradies. Brandon is still ahead, with 1,326 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bradie 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

Of the 111 years in which either name was published, Brandon for 109 years and Bradie for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Bradie Brandon
Total US births 783774,654
Most in one year 3729,724
Babies in 2025 171,326
Estimated living today 670742,000
Median age today 2132
Peak year 20081992
Best rank 5,574th girls6th boys
Rank in 2025 6,546th261st
First recorded 19141914
Girls / boys 582 / 2014,145 / 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 Bradies are over 21. That is 11 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 Bradie Brandon
England and Wales 7726,444

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: Bradie and Brandon.