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Bruce vs Bruna

American parents have registered 388,275 Bruces since 1880, against 1,069 Brunas. Bruce is still ahead, with 558 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bruce against Bruna, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bruce Bruna

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

Bruce 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 1907, when Bruce had 89 and Bruna had 7.

Side by side

  Bruce Bruna
Total US births 388,2751,069
Most in one year 14,69334
Babies in 2025 55822
Estimated living today 247,000590
Median age today 6621
Peak year 19561920
Best rank 33rd boys1,349th girls
Rank in 2025 536th5,554th
First recorded 18801907
Girls / boys 1,395 / 386,8801,069 / 0

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 Bruces alive today are over 66; half the Brunas are over 21. That is 45 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 Bruce Bruna
France 2,5301,905
England and Wales 1,306131
Belgium 41342
Switzerland 54203
Ireland 1533
Poland 205

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: Bruce and Bruna.