Bracken
Masculine · “Old Norse brakni”
Bracken is a Norse word. The Danes who settled northern England left a layer of everyday vocabulary that southern English never took: beck for a stream, fell for a hill, gill for a ravine, thwaite for a clearing, and brakni, the fern, which became bracken.
How old is the name Bracken?
Bracken first appears in US birth records in 1971 — 54 years ago. The typical Bracken alive today was born around 2001, making them about 24 years old. About 600 people named Bracken are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Bracken most popular?
Bracken peaked in 1998, reaching #2651 nationally. Today it ranks #8910, 6,259 places below that high. See the whole 1998 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From brakni to Bracken
The story of Bracken
The Danelaw, the part of England under Norse law from the late ninth century, left its mark most durably in place names and in dialect. North and east of a line from Chester to London the map fills with -by, -thorpe, -thwaite, -toft and -holm, all Norse. The vocabulary followed: beck, fell, gill, tarn, dale, garth, laithe, and words that later spread into standard English such as sky, skin, egg, window, knife, husband, law and both. Norse and Old English were close enough to be partly mutually intelligible, so the borrowing was unusually deep, reaching even the pronouns they, them and their. Bracken is a small piece of that. It stayed a northern word for a long time before becoming general, and the name carries the geography of the borrowing with it.
Meaning
Old Norse brakni, fern
Bracken is the northern English word for the large fern Pteridium aquilinum, from Old Norse brakni. It is also an English and Irish surname, either topographic, from someone who lived by a fern brake, or from the Irish O Breacain. The American given name follows the modern fashion for English nature words and surnames. The peak is 1998.
How the name formed
- brakni
- bracken
- Bracken
Related forms: Brackin · O Breacain
Pronouncing Bracken
BRAK-en
Two syllables, stress on the first. It is said exactly like the plant word, with no name-specific pronunciation.
Nicknames for Bracken
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1971
- Most boys named
- 199831 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2651reached in 1998
- Change vs 2023
- +60.0%8 in 2025, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Bracken in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Brackin in English — spelling variant
- O Breacain in Irish — related form
Brackens among us
people named Bracken are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 213,510 born in 2025 was named Bracken
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Ashford test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Bracken's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ashford climbed just as high around 1914, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ashford's path sketches the road Bracken is walking now.
Bracken sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Bracken beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Bracken in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Brack and Ken are both usable short forms.
- It is an ordinary English word and cannot be mispronounced.
- The nature-word category is well established for boys.
- It names a plant most Americans do not know.
- Bracken is invasive and unpopular with farmers in Britain.
- It reads as a surname to many people.
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What they receive
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Bracken
Masculine · #8910 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Brackens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Bracken are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Bracken in 2025?
- Bracken ranks #8910 among US boy names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Bracken?
- About 1 in every 213,510 US boys born in 2025 was named Bracken — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Bracken with classmates?
- Bracken will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Bracken
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Davie#8910 · Ned#8910 · Darious#8910 · Alois#8910 · Len#8910 · Barton#8910 · Desmon#8910 · Winfield#8910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Bracken? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Bracken and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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