Brandon
- Pronunciation
- [Bran-don]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Beacon Hill
- Origin
- English
About the Name Brandon
Brandon is an English place-name and surname meaning "hill covered with broom plants" — from Old English brōm (broom, a flowering shrub of the genus Cytisus) plus dūn (hill, down). The surname identified medieval English families originating from villages with this geography (Brandon in Norfolk, Brandon in Suffolk, Brandon in Warwickshire). The surname appears in English records continuously since at least the 11th century.
The name's medieval Christian anchor is the apocryphal Saint Brandon (more commonly Saint Brendan) — the 6th-century Irish monastic figure also known as Brendan the Navigator, who, according to medieval legend, made a multi-year voyage across the Atlantic in search of the Isle of the Blessed. Some 20th-century scholars have proposed that the Voyage of Saint Brendan describes a real Irish-monastic ocean crossing (possibly to Iceland, Greenland, or even North America) centuries before Norse expeditions.
The American Brandon surge is essentially a late-20th-century phenomenon, peaking in the 1990s when Brandon held the US top-15 boys' rank from 1991 through 1999. The name has receded since but remains in steady use. Notable bearers include American actor Brandon Lee (1965–1993, son of Bruce Lee, who died in an accidental shooting during filming of The Crow), American director Brandon Cronenberg, country singer Brandon Heath, and the fictional Brandon Walsh of Beverly Hills, 90210. The name's appeal is its compact masculine register — two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. The name reads as both modern American and lightly traditional. Common nicknames Bran, Brandy, and the rare Don each carry distinct registers; international forms include Brendan (the Irish form, with its own SSA tracking) and the original Irish Bréanainn.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Brandon
US Popularity History (1971–2025)
Annual US births named Brandon by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1992 with 29,627 boys named Brandon (boy rank #6 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #261 for boys (1,326 US births). That's 255 places below its 1992 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Brandon Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Brandon the strongest states are District of Columbia, Alabama, Louisiana.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #111 | 58 |
| 2 | Alabama | #124 | 447 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #124 | 477 |
| 4 | Delaware | #127 | 68 |
| 5 | Georgia | #133 | 915 |
| 6 | Maryland | #135 | 503 |
| 7 | California | #135 | 3,496 |
| 8 | Florida | #136 | 1,654 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #142 | 728 |
| 10 | Texas | #143 | 2,794 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Brandon in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Proud | Male | English |
| Brandan | Beacon On The Hill Or Gorse-Covered Hill. | Male | English |
| Branden | Beacon On The Hill Or Gorse-Covered Hill. | Male | English |
| Brandin | Beacon On The Hill Or Gorse-Covered Hill. | Male | English |
| Brandyn | Beacon On The Hill Or Gorse-Covered Hill. | Male | English |
| Brannon | Variant Of Brandon. | Male | Irish |
| Branton | Variant Of Brand. Mohawk Indian Joseph Brant Was A Renowned Strategist Who Fought For The British During The American Revolution: And A Devout Scholar Who Translated Christian Religious Works Into His Native Indian Tongue. | Male | English |
| Brennan | Female | English |
Looking for names like Brandon?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Brandon to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Brandon against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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