Humanverse

Breana vs Brendan

American parents have registered 92,141 Brendans since 1880, against 11,224 Breanas. Brendan is still ahead, with 195 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Breana against Brendan, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Breana Brendan

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

Brendan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1912 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1993, when Breana had 638 and Brendan had 2,321.

Side by side

  Breana Brendan
Total US births 11,22492,141
Most in one year 6984,005
Babies in 2025 13195
Estimated living today 11,00088,000
Median age today 2828
Peak year 19961999
Best rank 382nd girls96th boys
Rank in 2025 7,885th1,097th
First recorded 19731912
Girls / boys 11,224 / 0325 / 91,816

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.

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 Breana Brendan
England and Wales 72,828

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: Breana and Brendan.