Brody
Masculine
Brody is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 81,678 boys against 282 girls since 1880.
Brody began as a place in the north of Scotland — a patch of ground in Moray that gave its name to the family who held it, and to Brodie Castle that still stands there. It traveled the usual road for Scottish surnames: from land, to family, to first name, mostly in North America. Two syllables, both easy, ending on the same open -ee that Cody and Riley share.
How old is the name Brody?
Brody first appears in US birth records in 1954 — 71 years ago. The typical Brody alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 80,500 people named Brody are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Brody most popular?
Brody peaked in 2008, reaching #70 nationally. Today it ranks #236, 166 places below that high. See the whole 2008 chart.
Brody appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Brodie (estate in Moray, Scotland) to Brody
The story of Brody
The starting point is the estate of Brodie in Moray, in the northeast of Scotland, held by the family of the same name since the medieval period; Brodie Castle was built there in the sixteenth century. As with Ramsay, Lindsay and dozens of others, the land named the family, and the family name outlasted the connection to the land. Scottish emigration carried it across the Atlantic, where surnames have long been fair game as first names. Brody is the Americanized spelling of that surname, and it entered use here well within living memory rather than being handed down from the old country as a given name.
Meaningscholars disagree
From the Scottish place and surname Brodie; the place name itself is disputed
Two readings compete. One takes it from Gaelic roots meaning something like muddy place or ditch — unglamorous, but that is how a great many place names work. The other treats it as Pictish, from the older layer of language in northeast Scotland that we can only partly read. Neither has won, and the name is older than the argument.
How the name formed
- Brodieestate in Moray, Scotland
- BrodieScottish surname
- Brodiegiven name
- Brody
Related forms: Brodie · Brodie
Pronouncing Brody
BROH-dee
Stress on the first syllable, long o. No regional variation to speak of in English.
Nicknames for Brody
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
- 1954
- Most boys named
- 20086,299 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #70reached in 2008
- Change vs 2024
- −7.6%1,492 in 2025, from 1,615
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.
Brody in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Brodie in Scottish English — spelling variant
- Brodie in English (UK) — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida. International figures from Office for National Statistics. Sources
Brodys among us
people named Brody are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,145 born in 2025 was named Brody
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 Tommy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Brody's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tommy climbed just as high around 1944, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tommy's path sketches the road Brody is walking now.
Brody is coming down from a big peak (#70 in 2008). 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 Brody is headed
Brody should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Brody beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Brody in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables, entirely phonetic — a stranger reading it aloud will get it right the first time.
- Charts in England and Wales as well as the United States, so it crosses the Atlantic without translation.
- Short enough not to need a nickname, which spares the child the negotiation many longer names require.
- Carries a real Scottish surname and a real place behind it, for families who want a name with ground under it.
- Brody and Brodie are both in genuine use, so expect a lifetime of spelling it out. Neither version is wrong, which is precisely what makes the confusion permanent.
- It sits in a crowded sound-family — Cody, Brady, Grady, Bradley — and gets misheard among them, especially over the phone.
- Its rise and gentle step back mean it reads as a name of a particular recent generation rather than a classic. That fades: a name shared with people now in their teens will simply be a name shared with adults soon enough.
- The likeliest meaning behind the Scottish place is something along the lines of muddy ground, which delights some parents and disappoints others. Worth deciding which camp you are in before someone else tells you.
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What they receive
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Brody
Masculine · #236 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Brodys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 80,500 people named Brody are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Brody in 2025?
- Brody ranks #236 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,492 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Brody?
- About 1 in every 1,145 US boys born in 2025 was named Brody — 1,492 in all.
- Will my child share the name Brody with classmates?
- Brody will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Brody
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Patrick#235 · Kaiden#237 · Dallas#238 · Richard#234 · Muhammad#239 · Justin#233 · Alex#232 · Warren#240
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Brody? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Brody and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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