Brian

1,011,020 people in America carry this name — ranked #25 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it BRY uhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B R AY1 AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 1,011,020 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 334.7 about 1 in 328 people

Where Brian comes from and what it means

Celtic in origin, reading literally as “strong”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Brian has been given

1,172,927 babies were given this name since 1909. The busiest year was 1972, with 36,495 of them.

00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70s 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1970s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Brian

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Brian Nicholas — runs together
  • Brian Benjamin — same opening
  • Brian Nathan — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Brian has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation X.

Is Brian used for boys or for girls?

99.9% men
1,129 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Names built the same way as Brian

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The same name elsewhere

  • Bryan Ir
  • Bryney Ir
  • Brazil Manx

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How to spell Brian

Brian is how 93% of them spell it — 1,092,376 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Celtic origin