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Brien vs Brittany

American parents have registered 361,751 Brittanys since 1880, against 3,593 Briens. Brittany is still ahead, with 281 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brien against Brittany, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brien Brittany

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 89 years in which either name was published, Brittany for 55 years and Brien for 34 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Brien Brittany
Total US births 3,593361,751
Most in one year 9938,008
Babies in 2025 7281
Estimated living today 3,100353,000
Median age today 4934
Peak year 19631989
Best rank 766th boys3rd girls
Rank in 2025 9,714th928th
First recorded 19251963
Girls / boys 5 / 3,588360,673 / 1,078

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 Briens alive today are over 49; half the Brittanys are over 34. That is 15 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 Brien Brittany
Ireland 503

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: Brien and Brittany.