Humanverse

Brennan vs Brennen

American parents have registered 35,487 Brennans since 1880, against 9,217 Brennens. Brennan is still ahead, with 236 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Brennan Brennen

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 2003, when Brennan had 1,168 and Brennen had 406.

Side by side

  Brennan Brennen
Total US births 35,4879,217
Most in one year 1,550464
Babies in 2025 23620
Estimated living today 35,0009,000
Median age today 2222
Peak year 20092009
Best rank 242nd boys580th boys
Rank in 2025 1,002nd4,857th
First recorded 19161962
Girls / boys 2,229 / 33,258178 / 9,039

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 Brennan Brennen
England and Wales 54221

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: Brennan and Brennen.