Brett
Masculine · “a Breton”
Brett is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 159,109 boys against 3,404 girls since 1880. See Brett as a girl name
Brett began as a way of saying where a man was from: a Breton, one of the settlers who crossed from Brittany into England in the wake of the Norman Conquest. For centuries it was only a surname, until English-speaking parents started moving it to the front of the name — one syllable, ending in that clean stop, the same shape as Grant, Blake and Reese.
How old is the name Brett?
Brett first appears in US birth records in 1926 — 99 years ago. The typical Brett alive today was born around 1983, making them about 42 years old. About 147,000 people named Brett are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Brett most popular?
Brett peaked in 1986, reaching #69 nationally. Today it ranks #1382, 1,313 places below that high. See the whole 1986 chart.
Brett appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Breton to Brett
The story of Brett
Brittany, on the northwest coast of France, was settled by Britons who crossed the Channel in the early Middle Ages, and Bretons in turn came to England with the Normans in the eleventh century. Their neighbors labeled them by where they came from: le Bret, Bret, Brett. The label hardened into a hereditary surname across southern and western England, and much later — as English speakers grew fond of turning family names into first names — it stepped forward into given-name use, arriving on the American charts in the early twentieth century. It rose steadily through the postwar decades, carried along with the other short, surname-derived boys' names, and has been easing back since.
Meaning
a Breton — someone from Brittany
The medieval surname le Bret marked a person of Breton origin, distinguishing them from their English and Norman neighbors.
How the name formed
- Breton
- le Bret
- Bret
- Brett
Related forms: Bret · Breton
Pronouncing Brett
BRET
One syllable, rhyming with get. The double t changes nothing in speech, which is why the one-t spelling Bret persists alongside it.
Nicknames for Brett
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
- 1926
- Most boys named
- 19874,429 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #69reached in 1986
- Change vs 2023
- −28.9%133 in 2025, from 187
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.
Brett in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Bret in English — spelling variant
- Breton in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Bretts among us
people named Brett are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 12,843 born in 2025 was named Brett
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Brett
- #1382
- Brett on the 2025 chart
- #775
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Brett went to 133 boys in 2025, but Bret is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 153, which makes it the 775th most-given boys’ name of the year — 607 places above the chart.
- Brett133
- Bret20
About 1 boy in 11,164 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 12,843 for Brett itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Jessie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Brett's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jessie climbed just as high around 1900, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jessie's path sketches the road Brett is walking now.
Brett is coming down from a big peak (#69 in 1986). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Brett is headed
Brett should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Brett beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Brett in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable, one obvious pronunciation — no one has to ask twice how to say it.
- A documented history going back to the medieval surname le Bret, so the name rests on real ground rather than invention.
- Widely recognized in American English: people know the spelling on sight, even where they only know one Brett.
- Uncommon enough now that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate, while still being a name every adult has heard.
- The name is strongly clustered in one generation: most Bretts in the US today are adults around midlife, so it may read to some ears as a grown man's name rather than a baby's.
- Bret and Brett are both in genuine use, so expect a lifetime of quiet corrections about the second t.
- It sits close to Brent, Brad and Brock in sound, and gets mixed up with them more often than its bearers would like.
- Very short and consonant-final, so it can land abruptly against a one-syllable surname — worth saying the full name aloud a few times.
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What they receive
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Brett
Masculine · #1382 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Bretts are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 147,000 people named Brett are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Brett?
- Brett is the most-used spelling in US records — 133 of the 153 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Bret.
- How popular is the name Brett in 2025?
- Brett ranks #1382 among US boy names in 2025, with 133 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Brett?
- About 1 in every 12,843 US boys born in 2025 was named Brett — 133 in all.
- Will my child share the name Brett with classmates?
- Brett will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Brett
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Micaiah#1382 · Vernon#1382 · Ivar#1382 · Deon#1382 · Kymir#1382 · Thorin#1376 · Anton#1388 · Lyric#1388
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Brett? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Brett and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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