Briar
Briar reached its high-water mark in 2025 at number 400, and has been recorded 13,349 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 400th. About 13,000 Briars are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 6.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Briar boys named Briar
Girls and boys called Briar
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Briar crossed from boys to girls in 2015, and has stayed there for 11 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 66% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 36 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 13,349
- Estimated living today
- 13,000
- Median age today
- 6
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 400th
- Rank in 2025
- 400th
- First recorded
- 1971
- Girls / boys
- 7,002 / 6,347
How old the living Briars are
born that year still alive today
Of the 13,349 babies given the name since 1971, about 13,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 11,000 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2019 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 English
As a surname Middle English brere (“briar”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Briar is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Briar is most concentrated in North Dakota (3.5×), Oklahoma (3.1×), Arkansas (2.6×), Iowa (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular girls’ names the year Briar peaked:
Briar elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Briar | 250 | 1,271st |
| Scotland girls | Briar | 36 | 324th |
| England and Wales boys | Briar | 4 | 4,275th |
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.
Briar 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Briar | 5 | 5 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Briar 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.