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Bruce vs Bruno

American parents have registered 388,275 Bruces since 1880, against 18,875 Brunos. Bruce is still ahead, with 558 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bruce against Bruno, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bruce Bruno

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

Bruce has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Bruce had 526 and Bruno had 448.

Side by side

  Bruce Bruno
Total US births 388,27518,875
Most in one year 14,693448
Babies in 2025 558351
Estimated living today 247,00012,000
Median age today 6617
Peak year 19562022
Best rank 33rd boys625th boys
Rank in 2025 536th740th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,395 / 386,8800 / 18,875

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 Bruces alive today are over 66; half the Brunos are over 17. That is 49 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 Bruce Bruno
France 2,530220,860
Poland 2016,633
England and Wales 1,3061,999
Scotland 1,724144
Belgium 413944
Switzerland 54790
Ireland 153212
Northern Ireland 129

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: Bruce and Bruno.