Humanverse

Bradon vs Brandon

American parents have registered 774,654 Brandons since 1880, against 2,060 Bradons. Brandon is still ahead, with 1,326 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bradon 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 2005, when Bradon had 104 and Brandon had 12,977.

Side by side

  Bradon Brandon
Total US births 2,060774,654
Most in one year 10429,724
Babies in 2025 51,326
Estimated living today 2,000742,000
Median age today 2532
Peak year 20051992
Best rank 1,411th boys6th boys
Rank in 2025 12,008th261st
First recorded 19701914
Girls / boys 0 / 2,0604,145 / 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 Bradons are over 25. That is 7 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 Bradon Brandon
England and Wales 1426,444

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: Bradon and Brandon.