Braden
Braden is a boy's name that peaked in 2005, when it was the 133rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,152nd. About 45,000 Bradens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Braden boys named Braden
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 46,512
- Estimated living today
- 45,000
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2005
- Best rank
- 133rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,152nd
- First recorded
- 1916
- Girls / boys
- 277 / 46,235
How old the living Bradens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 46,512 babies given the name since 1916, about 45,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 15,000 of them are children and 140 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
Anglicised from an Irish surname Ó Bradáin (“descendant of Bradán”), from a personal name meaning "salmon, " from bradán (“salmon”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Bradens
- Braden Holtby (born 1989)Canadian ice hockey goaltender
People named Braden with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Braden is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Braden is most concentrated in Utah (4.4×), Oklahoma (2.9×), Idaho (2.6×), Kansas (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2005
The most popular boys’ names the year Braden peaked:
Braden elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Braden | 517 | 705th |
| Scotland boys | Braden | 20 | 339th |
| France boys | Braden | 15 | 6,438th |
| Ireland boys | Braden | 12 | 532nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Braden | 6 | 398th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Braden against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.