Bryan

327,372 people in America carry this name — ranked #156 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 327,372 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 108.4 about 1 in 1,012 people
  • As a surname 54,685 ranked #598 the other way round

What Bryan means and where it comes from

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 Bryan has been given

385,744 babies were given this name since 1883. The busiest year was 1985, with 8,789 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. 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.

What goes well after Bryan

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

Better avoided

  • Bryan Brian — rhymes
  • Bryan Nicholas — runs together
  • Bryan Benjamin — same opening

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

Bryan has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.

Is Bryan a boy's or a girl's name?

99.8% men
608 women

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

Names built the same way as Bryan

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 same name elsewhere

  • Brian 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.

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.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 63.3%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 23.4%
  • Two or more races — 2.6%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.3%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The states where Bryan is most common

In Nevada the name is given 1.3 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Nevada ×1.3
  • Delaware ×1.3
  • Oklahoma ×1.3
  • California ×1.2
  • Maryland ×1.2

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

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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