Brody vs Brooks
American parents have registered 81,960 Brodys since 1880, against 59,639 Brookses. But in 2025 it was Brooks that was commoner, 4,965 babies to 1,492.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Brody Brooks
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 143 years in which either name was published, Brooks for 115 years and Brody for 28 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.
Side by side
| Brody | Brooks | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 81,960 | 59,639 |
| Most in one year | 6,319 | 4,965 |
| Babies in 2025 | 1,492 | 4,965 |
| Estimated living today | 81,000 | 56,000 |
| Median age today | 14 | 6 |
| Peak year | 2008 | 2025 |
| Best rank | 70th boys | 64th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 236th | 64th |
| First recorded | 1954 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 282 / 81,678 | 1,693 / 57,946 |
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 Brodys alive today are over 14; half the Brookses are over 6. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Brody Utah (2.3×), Arizona (2.2×), Idaho (2.1×)
- Brooks Utah (3.6×), Idaho (2.2×), North Dakota (2.1×)
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 | Brody | Brooks |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 7,855 | 251 |
| Scotland | 967 | 61 |
| Ireland | 873 | 6 |
| Northern Ireland | 435 | 4 |
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: Brody and Brooks.