The first name Brian comes from the Celtic word ‘bryn’ and translated means ‘the hill’. Other meanings are ‘the uplifted’, ‘the exalted’ or ‘the strong’.
Brian is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Brian isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Brian ranks 198. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 11 were named Brian. In total, there are currently 1,164,698 people – children, adults and seniors – named Brian living in the United States, which is approximately 0.35 % of the entire population.
The first name Brian comes from the Celtic word ‘bryn’ and translated means ‘the hill’. Other meanings are ‘the uplifted’, ‘the exalted’ or ‘the strong’.
Did you know... that many musicians bear the name Brian? For example, Brian May, the guitarist of the group 'Queen'.
This was a real surprise! Brian is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #8 in the year 1977, when 32,682 parents chose this name for their newborn son. This made Brian much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this boys' name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Brian was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Brian ranked 281 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to newborn boys a total of 1,170 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 Brian will remain a universally popular name.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Brian is one of them. However, Brian is not equally widespread in all states, but people in New Hampshire seem to particularly fancy this name – the 5,828 men called Brian who live here are 1,09% of all male residents and push their name up to #18 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in New Hampshire. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 1,164,698 people with the name Brian. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Brian on position 25 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat 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 five letters, the name Brian is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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 Brian 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 Brian, you can simply say:
Butterfly
Rocket
Igloo
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Brian
Brian
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
B
R
I
A
N
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
I
A
N
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. Brian sounds like this:
