Brad is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
… it’s a special occasion. That’s because the name Brad is quite rare in the US. While it’s still a name in use, lately, only approximately 3 out of 100,000 boys have been named Brad. In the SmartGenius ranking, Brad is #2,034 on the list of most common boys names. In the entire USA, approximately 80,035 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Brad. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Brad reached its highest rank ever in the year 1975 at #99. In other words: 2,620 newborn boys were named Brad that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Brad is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Brad will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Brad was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Brad ranked 3,103 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby boys a total of 32 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Brad will remain a universally popular name.
The name Brad may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Brad is apparently especially popular in Utah. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 676 men in Utah is called Brad. In total, that’s 2,014 people who feel addressed when the name Brad is shouted loudly across Utah and who ensure that their name makes it to #169 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Brad as the answer a total of 80,035 times. This places Brad at #324 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Brad as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter B is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.2% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Brad is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Thus, it follows that if 4.2% of all boys' names start with a B, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: Brian is the boys’ name starting with B, which is the most common of all.
If your name is Brad and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Brad, you can simply say:
Butterfly
Rocket
Apple
Dinosaur
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Brad
Brad
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
B
R
A
D
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
B
R
A
D
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Brad sounds like this:
