Brett
- Pronunciation
- [Brett]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Brit. A Native Of Brittany: (France) Or Britain: (England).
- Origin
- English
About the Name Brett
Brett is an English surname-turned-given-name meaning "a Breton" or "native of Brittany" — the northwestern French region whose Celtic inhabitants gave their name to this family of words. By extension the term also came to refer broadly to a Briton, connecting the name to both the French and British Isles Celtic heritage. Like many English surnames derived from ethnic or regional identifiers, Brett crossed into use as a given name in the twentieth century, carried by the association of such names with a certain outdoor, rugged quality that appealed to mid-century American naming sensibilities.
Brett Favre (born 1969) is the American former professional football player whose 20-season NFL career — primarily with the Green Bay Packers (1992–2007) — produced one of the most celebrated quarterback careers in American football history of the late twentieth century.
Brett first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1969 and climbed to its peak rank of #69 in 1986, at the height of a 1980s wave of short, strong-sounding masculine names. The name maintained a long presence, last appearing in the top-1000 in 2020 at #925 with 241 births — over five decades of tracked history. Total top-1000 births reached 97,408, reflecting genuine broad use during its peak decades. Recorded variants are Bret, the alternate single-t spelling, and Brit, a related form that references the same British and Celtic geographic heritage.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Brett
US Popularity History (1969–2020)
Annual US births named Brett by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1986 with 4,731 boys named Brett (boy rank #69 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #925 for boys (241 US births). That's 856 places below its 1986 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 Brett 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 Brett the strongest states are Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #491 | 29 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #535 | 16 |
| 3 | Kansas | #550 | 22 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #582 | 33 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #594 | 21 |
| 6 | Oklahoma | #602 | 33 |
| 7 | Maryland | #628 | 21 |
| 8 | Missouri | #656 | 60 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #667 | 55 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #670 | 39 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #1,135 | 68 |
| 2 | Texas | #896 | 160 |
| 3 | Georgia | #875 | 37 |
| 4 | New York | #875 | 73 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #871 | 68 |
| 6 | Florida | #860 | 80 |
| 7 | Virginia | #819 | 44 |
| 8 | Michigan | #803 | 42 |
| 9 | Arizona | #799 | 31 |
| 10 | Ohio | #795 | 63 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Brett in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Brett
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Brett.
- Brett Favre — Football Player (1969)
Looking for names like Brett?
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 Brett to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Brett 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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