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Brendon vs Brennan

American parents have registered 35,487 Brennans since 1880, against 20,103 Brendons. Brennan is still ahead, with 236 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brendon against Brennan, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brendon Brennan

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

Of the 85 years in which either name was published, Brennan for 53 years and Brendon for 32 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Brendon Brennan
Total US births 20,10335,487
Most in one year 8681,550
Babies in 2025 48236
Estimated living today 19,00035,000
Median age today 2822
Peak year 19982009
Best rank 318th boys242nd boys
Rank in 2025 2,676th1,002nd
First recorded 19271916
Girls / boys 22 / 20,0812,229 / 33,258

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 Brendons alive today are over 28; half the Brennans are over 22. That is 6 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 Brendon Brennan
England and Wales 897542
France 405110
Scotland 4131

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: Brendon and Brennan.