Brenda
About 610,597 American babies have been named Brenda since 1897, most of them around 1957. In 2025 it ranked 1,525th. About 496,000 Brendas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Brenda boys named Brenda
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 610,597
- Estimated living today
- 496,000
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 13th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,525th
- First recorded
- 1897
- Girls / boys
- 608,478 / 2,119
How old the living Brendas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 610,597 babies given the name since 1897, about 496,000 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 6,900 of them are children and 258,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 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 the name comes from
Possibly from Old Norse brandr (“sword”); by folk etymology seen as a feminine form of Brendan. Its use as a nickname for Queen Elizabeth II originated in Private Eye in reaction to a perceived attempt by the royals to appear less distant and upper class.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Brendas
- Brenda Song (born 1988)American actress and model
- Brenda Fricker (1945–2026)Irish actress
- Brenda Blethyn (born 1946)British actress
- Brenda Vaccaro (born 1939)American actress
- Brenda Lee (born 1944)American singer and recording artist
- Brenda Fassie (1964–2004)South African pop singer
- Brenda Milner (born 1918)Canada-based British neuroscientist and neuropsychologist
- Ana Brenda Contreras (born 1986)Mexican actress and singer
People named Brenda with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Brenda is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Brenda is most concentrated in West Virginia (2.2×), Kentucky (1.9×), Tennessee (1.8×), North Carolina (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular girls’ names the year Brenda peaked:
Brenda elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Brenda | 4,275 | 109th |
| New Zealand girls | Brenda | 2,451 | 48th |
| Ireland girls | Brenda | 2,293 | 55th |
| Italy girls | Brenda | 1,210 | — |
| Belgium girls | Brenda | 484 | 159th |
| Scotland girls | Brenda | 262 | 130th |
| England and Wales girls | Brenda | 210 | 1,660th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Brenda | 6 | 348th |
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.
Brenda: rank by region
In 2010, Brenda was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Brenda | 523 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Brenda among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Brenda | 6,891 | 7,674 |
| Finland girls | Brenda | 44 | 55 |
| the Netherlands boys | Brenda | — | 24 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Brenda lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 3,265 women called Brenda were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Brenda | 207 | 0.351 | 355 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Brenda | 162 | 0.292 | 401 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Brenda | 222 | 0.216 | 467 |
| Toledo | Brenda | 80 | 0.213 | 441 |
| Asturias | Brenda | 97 | 0.183 | 518 |
| Pontevedra | Brenda | 89 | 0.181 | 478 |
Listed in 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Brenda 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.