Humanverse

Brendyn vs Brennan

American parents have registered 35,487 Brennans since 1880, against 1,407 Brendyns. Brennan is still ahead, with 236 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Brendyn 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

Brennan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1916 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Brendyn had 74 and Brennan had 1,084.

Side by side

  Brendyn Brennan
Total US births 1,40735,487
Most in one year 961,550
Babies in 2025 7236
Estimated living today 1,40035,000
Median age today 1822
Peak year 20092009
Best rank 1,638th boys242nd boys
Rank in 2025 9,714th1,002nd
First recorded 19861916
Girls / boys 0 / 1,4072,229 / 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 Brennans alive today are over 22; half the Brendyns are over 18. That is 4 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 Brendyn Brennan
England and Wales 3542

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: Brendyn and Brennan.