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Brad vs Brayden

American parents have registered 137,606 Braydens since 1880, against 83,293 Brads. Brayden is still ahead, with 1,545 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brad against Brayden, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brad Brayden

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 106 years in which either name was published, Brad for 75 years and Brayden for 31 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Brad Brayden
Total US births 83,293137,606
Most in one year 2,6519,168
Babies in 2025 241,545
Estimated living today 70,000136,000
Median age today 5214
Peak year 19602010
Best rank 134th boys40th boys
Rank in 2025 4,249th229th
First recorded 18801970
Girls / boys 233 / 83,0601,058 / 136,548

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 Brads alive today are over 52; half the Braydens are over 14. That is 38 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 Brad Brayden
England and Wales 1,3211,822
France 540245
New Zealand 450317
Scotland 242230
Ireland 71125
Northern Ireland 4841
Belgium 316

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: Brad and Brayden.