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Bronwyn vs Brooks

American parents have registered 59,639 Brookses since 1880, against 3,729 Bronwyns. Brooks is still ahead, with 4,965 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bronwyn against Brooks, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bronwyn Brooks

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

Brooks has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1964, when Bronwyn had 83 and Brooks had 112.

Side by side

  Bronwyn Brooks
Total US births 3,72959,639
Most in one year 834,965
Babies in 2025 374,965
Estimated living today 3,50056,000
Median age today 316
Peak year 19642025
Best rank 1,211th girls64th boys
Rank in 2025 3,903rd64th
First recorded 19421880
Girls / boys 3,729 / 01,693 / 57,946

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 Bronwyns alive today are over 31; half the Brookses are over 6. That is 25 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 Bronwyn Brooks
England and Wales 1,084251
Scotland 22761
Ireland 2526
Northern Ireland 144

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: Bronwyn and Brooks.