Humanverse

Brodee vs Brooke

American parents have registered 200,521 Brookes since 1880, against 742 Brodees. Brooke is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brodee against Brooke, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brodee Brooke

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

Brooke has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Brodee had 31 and Brooke had 1,626.

Side by side

  Brodee Brooke
Total US births 742200,521
Most in one year 566,749
Babies in 2025 12972
Estimated living today 730196,000
Median age today 1428
Peak year 20101996
Best rank 2,287th boys45th girls
Rank in 2025 6,803rd313th
First recorded 19911914
Girls / boys 15 / 727198,491 / 2,030

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 Brookes alive today are over 28; half the Brodees are over 14. That is 14 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 Brodee Brooke
England and Wales 2518,666

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: Brodee and Brooke.