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Bryon vs Bryson

American parents have registered 83,525 Brysons since 1880, against 14,737 Bryons. Bryson is still ahead, with 2,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bryon against Bryson, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bryon Bryson

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 113 years in which either name was published, Bryon for 58 years and Bryson for 55 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Bryon Bryson
Total US births 14,73783,525
Most in one year 4514,687
Babies in 2025 172,416
Estimated living today 13,00082,000
Median age today 4912
Peak year 19702017
Best rank 382nd boys86th boys
Rank in 2025 5,399th152nd
First recorded 18971914
Girls / boys 17 / 14,720284 / 83,241

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 Bryons alive today are over 49; half the Brysons are over 12. That is 37 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 Bryon Bryson
England and Wales 3374
Scotland 320

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: Bryon and Bryson.