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Brennan vs Breydon

American parents have registered 35,487 Brennans since 1880, against 593 Breydons. Brennan is still ahead, with 236 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Brennan Breydon

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 2005, when Brennan had 1,101 and Breydon had 43.

Side by side

  Brennan Breydon
Total US births 35,487593
Most in one year 1,55043
Babies in 2025 236under 5
Estimated living today 35,000590
Median age today 2217
Peak year 20092005
Best rank 242nd boys2,567th boys
Rank in 2025 1,002ndunranked
First recorded 19161996
Girls / boys 2,229 / 33,2580 / 593

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 Breydons are over 17. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Brennan Breydon
England and Wales 5423

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 Breydon.