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Bram vs Brandon

American parents have registered 774,654 Brandons since 1880, against 1,537 Brams. Brandon is still ahead, with 1,326 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bram 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 1948, when Bram had 5 and Brandon had 35.

Side by side

  Bram Brandon
Total US births 1,537774,654
Most in one year 7229,724
Babies in 2025 561,326
Estimated living today 1,500742,000
Median age today 1632
Peak year 20161992
Best rank 1,991st boys6th boys
Rank in 2025 2,421st261st
First recorded 19481914
Girls / boys 0 / 1,5374,145 / 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 Brams are over 16. That is 16 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 Bram Brandon
England and Wales 21126,444
France 511,160
Belgium 3,4271,423
Ireland 61,566

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: Bram and Brandon.