Humanverse

Bryan vs Bryton

American parents have registered 391,306 Bryans since 1880, against 3,231 Brytons. Bryan is still ahead, with 1,005 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bryan against Bryton, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bryan Bryton

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

Bryan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1883 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Bryan had 3,093 and Bryton had 128.

Side by side

  Bryan Bryton
Total US births 391,3063,231
Most in one year 8,788162
Babies in 2025 1,00529
Estimated living today 355,0003,200
Median age today 3919
Peak year 19852006
Best rank 48th boys1,124th boys
Rank in 2025 336th3,757th
First recorded 18831985
Girls / boys 1,717 / 389,589210 / 3,021

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 Bryans alive today are over 39; half the Brytons are over 19. That is 20 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 Bryan Bryton
France 25,445140

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: Bryan and Bryton.