Bryce

107,825 people in America carry this name — ranked #523 of 923.

Most Americans carrying it were born this century.

Say it BRYS

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

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

  • People counted 107,825 2020 Census
  • Rank #523 Common
  • Per 100,000 35.7 about 1 in 3,074 people
  • As a surname 4,689 ranked #6,902 the other way round

Where Bryce comes from and what it means

Welsh in origin, reading literally as “a contraction of Ap Rhys, the son of Rhys or Rhees”.

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.

Bryce name popularity by year

121,158 babies were given this name since 1908. The busiest year was 2000, with 4,436 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 2000s. 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 Bryce

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Bryce Brian — same opening
  • Bryce Steven — runs together
  • Bryce Eric — 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.

Boys or girls: who is called Bryce?

97.2% men
2,989 women

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

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 76.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 10.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 5.3%
  • Two or more races — 5.8%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

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.

How to spell Bryce

Bryce is how 25% of them spell it — 435,197 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.

Names built the same way as Bryce

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

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

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names 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