Humanverse

Brooke vs Brown

American parents have registered 200,521 Brookes since 1880, against 1,482 Browns. Brooke is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Brooke Brown

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 142 years in which either name was published, Brooke for 89 years and Brown for 53 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Brooke Brown
Total US births 200,5211,482
Most in one year 6,74955
Babies in 2025 97210
Estimated living today 196,000300
Median age today 2866
Peak year 19961918
Best rank 45th girls894th boys
Rank in 2025 313th7,679th
First recorded 19141881
Girls / boys 198,491 / 2,0305 / 1,477

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 Browns alive today are over 66; half the Brookes are over 28. 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 Brooke Brown
France 2555

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: Brooke and Brown.