Humanverse

Bronte vs Brooke

American parents have registered 200,521 Brookes since 1880, against 932 Brontes. Brooke is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bronte 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 1992, when Bronte had 131 and Brooke had 5,793.

Side by side

  Bronte Brooke
Total US births 932200,521
Most in one year 1316,749
Babies in 2025 under 5972
Estimated living today 920196,000
Median age today 2828
Peak year 19921996
Best rank 1,294th girls45th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked313th
First recorded 19691914
Girls / boys 914 / 18198,491 / 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.

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 Bronte Brooke
England and Wales 1,30418,666
Scotland 343,290
Northern Ireland 3883

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: Bronte and Brooke.