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Bradley vs Brayan

American parents have registered 314,957 Bradleys since 1880, against 16,558 Brayans. Bradley is still ahead, with 830 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bradley Brayan

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 2006, when Bradley had 2,150 and Brayan had 1,151.

Side by side

  Bradley Brayan
Total US births 314,95716,558
Most in one year 7,2621,151
Babies in 2025 830334
Estimated living today 279,00016,000
Median age today 4217
Peak year 19802006
Best rank 51st boys294th boys
Rank in 2025 403rd768th
First recorded 18801979
Girls / boys 1,949 / 313,00818 / 16,540

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 Brayans are over 17. That is 25 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 Brayan
England and Wales 30,349204
France 2,6003,920
Poland 13862
Belgium 503271
Ireland 7157

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 Brayan.