Bryan

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Bryan is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) from the male personal name Brian, of Celtic origin and perhaps meaning ‘high’ or ‘noble’; (ii) ‘person from Brionne’, northern France.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland1 in 155◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 219
  • CACanada1 in 240

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.2M ●

across 9 countries

#98 ●

of 16M given names

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
609 ●

17M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 258 ◐

Ecuador

Spellings & scripts●

BrianLatin · English●12M records
בריאןHebrew · Hebrew●4K records
브라이언Hangul · Korean●4 records
ԲրայանArmenian · Armenian●0 records
ব্রায়ানBengali · Bangla●0 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Brian in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AR Argentina and 16 more, Brayan in BR Brazil, CO Colombia, MX Mexico and 4 more and בריאן in FR France.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

(i) from the male personal name Brian, of Celtic origin and perhaps meaning ‘high’ or ‘noble’; (ii) ‘person from Brionne’, northern France.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Bryan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#221,009,89114M rec.1 in 3291MBrian609
GB United Kingdom#31952,967858K rec.—4Brian291
AR Argentina#258525,742260K rec.—420Brian140
AU Australia#53376,744324K rec.—75Brian300
CA Canada#22345,302328K rec.—11Brian286
PH Philippines#62218,283171K rec.——Bryan167
CO Colombia#76143,22067K rec.—7Brayan134
MX Mexico#333113,73883K rec.——Brayan184
PE Peru#34696,53575K rec.——Brayan75
BR Brazil#59371,67941K rec.1 in 3K72KBrayan151
IT Italy#13966,01069K rec.—508Brian130
EC Ecuador#10065,634△2.7K rec.1 in 25866KBryan79

Roughly 1M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 329). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English3.2M64%
  • Spanish576K12%
  • Portuguese544K11%
  • French194K4%
  • 62K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English3,192,04364%
Spanish576,43212%
Portuguese543,86311%
French193,5924%
61,9381%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Bryan is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name1.5M records spelled Bryan30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, France, United States, Ecuador

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Bryän, B'Ryan, Bryán, Bryân, Brÿan

  • a separate given name81K records spelled Bryan2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India

  • Indonesian given name37K records spelled Bryan5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written 'Bryan, Brýáņ

  • Polish given name23K records spelled Bryan101 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Brian, Brayan, Брайан, Brajan, Брайн

  • English surname13K records spelled Bryan153 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Thai

    Also written Braun, Bryon, Brian, Braian, Bryant

  • Greek given name7.6K records spelled Bryan8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Brian, Braian, Briant, Mpraian, Μπραιαν

79 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Bryan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, Variant of Brian, from Irish/Celtic roots, often interpreted as 'high, noble'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Variant of Brian, influenced by the usual spelling of the associated surname.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, A male given name from Irish, a less common alternative spelling of Brian.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, William Jennings, US lawyer.

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, politician; pers. name

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

02.5K5K7.5K10K1900195020008.7K · 1985

Show as table
Bryan in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1883–2025
Yearrecords
18836
18865
18907
189210
18935
18949
189527
1896157
189797
189857
189936
190055
190119
190211
190310
190414
190510
19069
190722
190827
190920
191012
191115
191227
191345
191452
191550
191645
191752
191877
191987
192083
1921103
1922119
192398
1924116
1925149
1926139
1927105
1928126
1929124
1930122
1931125
1932125
1933109
1934122
1935108
1936114
1937132
1938161
1939177
1940200
1941216
1942298
1943320
1944340
1945308
1946460
1947602
1948561
1949671
1950737
1951809
1952849
19531,049
19541,225
19551,568
19562,438
19573,374
19584,091
19594,488
19604,780
19615,028
19624,992
19635,257
19645,272
19655,345
19665,890
19676,017
19686,254
19696,469
19706,452
19716,611
19727,035
19737,110
19747,226
19756,998
19767,288
19777,886
19787,291
19797,441
19807,513
19817,215
19827,498
19838,191
19848,270
19858,717
19868,651
19878,560
19888,036
19897,851
19907,439
19916,757
19926,835
19936,159
19945,606
19955,444
19965,560
19975,251
19985,309
19995,391
20006,143
20016,125
20026,617
20036,619
20046,732
20056,454
20066,699
20076,180
20085,505
20094,856
20103,938
20113,521
20123,083
20132,893
20142,731
20152,492
20162,130
20171,840
20181,641
20191,425
20201,359
20211,211
20221,172
20231,082
20241,105
20251,005

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 137 years between 1883–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Bryan Ferry, b. 1945Bryan Brown, b. 1947Bryan Cranston, b. 1956Bryan Adams, b. 1959Bryan Singer, b. 1965Dexter Holland, b. 1965Bryan Burk, b. 1968Skeet Ulrich, b. 1970Bryan Danielson, b. 1981James Deen, b. 1986

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 119 sources across 65 countries.

Official registers attesting Bryan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020327K#156
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202272K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—71K#419
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202466K#25
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201057K#585
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200055K#542
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202055K#598
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202425K#350
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)202022K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—13K#1,834
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—10K#50
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—4.7K#737

Reference works 6

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,198 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Bryan?
We estimate roughly 1.2 million people bear Bryan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Bryan have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.0 million people bear Bryan in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled brian.
How common is Bryan compared with other names?
In the United States, Bryan is the 22nd most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Bryan a male or female name?
Bryan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Bryan mean?
Recorded meaning: (i) from the male personal name Brian, of Celtic origin and perhaps meaning ‘high’ or ‘noble’; (ii) ‘person from Brionne’, northern France.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bryan

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Bryan” — the 22nd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Bryan parses inside a full name →