Humanverse

Broden vs Brody

American parents have registered 81,960 Brodys since 1880, against 1,616 Brodens. Brody is still ahead, with 1,492 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Broden Brody

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

Brody has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1954 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Broden had 50 and Brody had 1,083.

Side by side

  Broden Brody
Total US births 1,61681,960
Most in one year 1406,319
Babies in 2025 131,492
Estimated living today 1,60081,000
Median age today 1614
Peak year 20082008
Best rank 1,240th boys70th boys
Rank in 2025 6,446th236th
First recorded 19931954
Girls / boys 0 / 1,616282 / 81,678

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 Brodens alive today are over 16; half the Brodys are over 14. That is 2 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 Broden Brody
England and Wales 1617,855
Scotland 58967

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: Broden and Brody.