Humanverse

Briseis vs Brittany

American parents have registered 361,751 Brittanys since 1880, against 1,376 Briseises. Brittany is still ahead, with 281 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Briseis 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

Brittany has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1963 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2018, when Briseis had 76 and Brittany had 307.

Side by side

  Briseis Brittany
Total US births 1,376361,751
Most in one year 10038,008
Babies in 2025 23281
Estimated living today 1,400353,000
Median age today 1234
Peak year 20061989
Best rank 1,988th girls3rd girls
Rank in 2025 5,410th928th
First recorded 20001963
Girls / boys 1,376 / 0360,673 / 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 Brittanys alive today are over 34; half the Briseises are over 12. That is 22 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 Briseis Brittany
England and Wales 81,761
France 235 Briséis655
Belgium 5 Briséis76

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: Briseis and Brittany.