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Brook vs Brooklyn

American parents have registered 127,055 Brooklyns since 1880, against 14,021 Brooks. Brooklyn is still ahead, with 2,337 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brook against Brooklyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brook Brooklyn

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 95 years in which either name was published, Brook for 60 years and Brooklyn for 35 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Brook Brooklyn
Total US births 14,021127,055
Most in one year 4967,257
Babies in 2025 472,337
Estimated living today 13,000126,000
Median age today 3513
Peak year 19802011
Best rank 503rd girls21st girls
Rank in 2025 4,352nd118th
First recorded 19151972
Girls / boys 10,630 / 3,391125,197 / 1,858

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 Brooks alive today are over 35; half the Brooklyns are over 13. That is 22 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 Brook Brooklyn
England and Wales 9034,694
Scotland 37505
France 50445
Ireland 10346

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: Brook and Brooklyn.