Humanverse

Bradley vs Brant

American parents have registered 314,957 Bradleys since 1880, against 9,579 Brants. Bradley is still ahead, with 830 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bradley Brant

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

Bradley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1929, when Bradley had 110 and Brant had 9.

Side by side

  Bradley Brant
Total US births 314,9579,579
Most in one year 7,262241
Babies in 2025 83035
Estimated living today 279,0008,600
Median age today 4239
Peak year 19801970
Best rank 51st boys518th boys
Rank in 2025 403rd3,314th
First recorded 18801918
Girls / boys 1,949 / 313,00810 / 9,569

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 Bradleys alive today are over 42; half the Brants are over 39. 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 Bradley Brant
England and Wales 30,3493

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: Bradley and Brant.