Brain
Brain reached its high-water mark in 1982 at number 632, and has been recorded 4,606 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2017. About 4,200 Brains are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Brain boys named Brain
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,606
- Estimated living today
- 4,200
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1982
- Best rank
- 632nd
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1950
- Girls / boys
- 10 / 4,596
How old the living Brains are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,606 babies given the name since 1950, about 4,200 are alive — 91 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where Brain is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Brain is most concentrated in Louisiana (2.3×), Illinois (2.1×), California (2.1×), Michigan (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1982
The most popular boys’ names the year Brain peaked:
Brain elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Brain | 3 | 379th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Brain against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.