Brennan
About 35,487 American babies have been named Brennan since 1916, most of them around 2009. In 2025 it ranked 1,002nd. About 35,000 Brennans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 22.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Brennan boys named Brennan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 35,487
- Estimated living today
- 35,000
- Median age today
- 22
- Peak year
- 2009
- Best rank
- 242nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,002nd
- First recorded
- 1916
- Girls / boys
- 2,229 / 33,258
How old the living Brennans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 35,487 babies given the name since 1916, about 35,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 13,000 of them are children and 70 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2003 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
Origin a surname
From Irish Ó Braonáin (“descendant of Braonán”), a diminutive of braon (“moisture, drop”). Alternatively, from Irish Ó Branáin (“descendant of Branán”), a diminutive of bran (“raven”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Brennans
- Brennan Johnson (born 2001)Welsh-English association football player
- Brennan Heart (born 1982)Dutch DJ and hardstyle producer
- Brennan Brown (born 1968)American stage, film, and television actor
- Brennan Elliott (born 1975)actor
People named Brennan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Brennan is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Brennan is most concentrated in Louisiana (3.4×), Hawaii (2.1×), Utah (2.0×), Idaho (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2009
The most popular boys’ names the year Brennan peaked:
Brennan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Brennan | 542 | 559th |
| France boys | Brennan | 110 | 3,049th |
| Scotland boys | Brennan | 31 | 436th |
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
Brennan 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.