Brian
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Brian is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 18th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Celtic name meaning 'hill'; borne by Brian Boru, famed high king of Ireland.
- IEIreland≈1 in 181(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 253
- CACanada≈1 in 265
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Brian itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #57 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 681 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 181 (inferred from the name graph)
1,011,020 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bryan in PH Philippines and Brayan in EC Ecuador.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Celtic name meaning 'hill'; borne by Brian Boru, famed high king of Ireland.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Brian counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #18 | 1,011,020 | 1 in 329 | 1M | Brian | 681 |
| GB United Kingdom | #30 | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 253 | 4 | Brian | 383 |
| CA Canada | #18 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 265 | 11 | Brian | 378 |
| PH Philippines | #54 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Bryan | 184 |
| EG Egypt | #382 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 993 | — | Brian | 36 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 65,634as Bryan | 1 in 258 | 66K | Brayan | 79 |
| IE Ireland | #14 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 181 | — | Brian | 224 |
| NZ New Zealand | #19 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 271 | — | Brian | 176 |
1,011,020 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INEC — civil registry names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Brian 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 English, from a Breton name introduced into England by the Normans; in the north also from Olr Brian via Norsemen from Ireland; first attested Radulfus filius Brien 1086
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In Swedish, Brian är ett ursprungligen iriskt eller bretonskt namn, kanske från keltiskans *brigonos ’hög, ädel’. Det kom till Sverige med återvändande USA-emigranter runt 1900, men blev mer populärt först efter andra världskriget.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, Irish; high, noble
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Fuerte
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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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Brian Epsteinb. 1934GBBritish personal manager and impresario (1934–1967)
- Brian David Josephsonb. 1940GBWelsh physicist
- Brian De Palmab. 1940USAmerican filmmaker
- Brian Georgeb. 1952ILBritish actor
- Warriorb. 1959USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and bodybuilder (1959-2014)
- Brian Schmidtb. 1967USAmerican-born Australian astrophysicist
- Marilyn Mansonb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician (born 1969)
- Brian Welchb. 1970USAmerican guitarist (born 1970)
- Brian Tylerb. 1972USAmerican composer
- Jordan Hendersonb. 1990GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1990)
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(measured from records)
Attested in 129 sources across 67 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1M | #25 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 2.8K | #393 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #25 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 979 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 72 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 8 | #537 |
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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Brian a male or female name?
- Brian 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 Brian mean, and where does it come from?
- Celtic name meaning 'hill'; borne by Brian Boru, famed high king of Ireland. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Brian?
- In the etymology graph, Bryan, Brayan and Braian are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Brian?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,011,020 people named Brian in 2020, about 1 in 329 residents.
- How common is Brian compared with other names?
- In the United States, Brian is the 18th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Brian have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.0 million people named Brian, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled brian.
What do you want to know about Brian?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/brianThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Brian” — the 18th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.