Bryan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from the male personal name Brian, of Celtic origin and perhaps meaning ‘high’ or ‘noble’; (ii) ‘person from Brionne’, northern France
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɹaɪən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bryan 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.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1K(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 3K
- IEIreland≈1 in 181as Brian
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 Bryan 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 258 (inferred from the name graph)
1,011,020 named Brian, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Brian in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 4 more 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)
(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(measured from records)
Bryan 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 | 1,011,020as Brian | 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 |
| BR Brazil | #738 | 71,679 | 1 in 3K | 72K | Brian | 152 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 65,634 | 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); 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)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Bryan Ferryb. 1945GBBritish singer (born 1945)
- Bryan Brownb. 1947AUAustralian actor
- Bryan Cranstonb. 1956USAmerican actor (born 1956)
- Bryan Adamsb. 1959CACanadian singer-songwriter and musician (born 1959)
- Bryan Singerb. 1965USAmerican film director and producer
- Dexter Hollandb. 1965USnot in their usual nameAmerican rock musician
- Bryan Burkb. 1968USAmerican film and television producer
- Skeet Ulrichb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Bryan Danielsonb. 1981USAmerican professional wrestler
- James Deenb. 1986USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actor
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 121 sources across 65 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 327K | #156 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 72K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 71K | #419 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 66K | #25 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 22K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 13K | #1,834 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 746 | #419 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 608 | #156 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 188 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 110 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 11 | #402 |
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
- What does the name Bryan mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the male personal name Brian, of Celtic origin and perhaps meaning ‘high’ or ‘noble’; (ii) ‘person from Brionne’, northern France. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- 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 are other forms of the name Bryan?
- In the etymology graph, Brian, Brayan and Braian are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Bryan?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 71,679 people named Bryan in 2022, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Bryan compared with other names?
- In the United States, Bryan is the 18th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Bryan 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 is Bryan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bryan is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 258 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Bryan?
- A machine transcription gives /bɹaɪən/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Bryan?
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/bryanThe 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), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Bryan” — the 18th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.