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Brendan vs Brendon

American parents have registered 92,141 Brendans since 1880, against 20,103 Brendons. Brendan is still ahead, with 195 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Brendan Brendon

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 1927, when Brendan had 18 and Brendon had 8.

Side by side

  Brendan Brendon
Total US births 92,14120,103
Most in one year 4,005868
Babies in 2025 19548
Estimated living today 88,00019,000
Median age today 2828
Peak year 19991998
Best rank 96th boys318th boys
Rank in 2025 1,097th2,676th
First recorded 19121927
Girls / boys 325 / 91,81622 / 20,081

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 Brendan Brendon
New Zealand 2,0103,163
England and Wales 2,828897
France 1,705405
Scotland 1,08741
Belgium 6516
Poland 25

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: Brendan and Brendon.