Brooklyn
- Pronunciation
- [Brook-lyn]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Water: Stream.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a place-name borrowed directly from the New York City borough — itself named after the Dutch town of Breukelen in the Netherlands. The Dutch name Breukelen traces to roots variously interpreted as "broken land" or "marshland." When Dutch settlers founded the village of Breuckelen in 1646 in what is now western Long Island, the name eventually anglicized to Brooklyn. The borough became part of New York City in 1898.
Brooklyn's transition from place-name to personal name is essentially a late-20th- and 21st-century American phenomenon. SSA records show essentially no baby Brooklyns before 1985; the name climbed dramatically through the 1990s and 2000s, partly through the broader American taste for place-names as girls' names (Savannah, Cheyenne, Aspen). The single most influential celebrity bearer is Brooklyn Beckham (born 1999, son of David and Victoria Beckham — and named for the place where he was conceived), whose high-visibility celebrity childhood lifted the name globally.
Brooklyn climbed into the US top 50 girls' rank by 2005 and held a top-30 range through 2018. The name has been used for both boys and girls but remains predominantly female. The appeal is its layered American-cosmopolitan register — geographic-Americana, urban-cool, hip-hop-cool (Brooklyn's reputation as a creative center for music, art, and fashion), and the in-built historical depth of its Dutch origin. Common nicknames Brooke, Brook, Brookie, and the rare Lyn each carry distinct registers (Brooke being a separate but related popular name). The alternate spelling Brooklynn (with double N) has its own SSA tracking. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is recent and American-specific.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Brooklyn
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Brooklyn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2011 with 7,178 girls named Brooklyn (girl rank #21 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #118 for girls (2,300 US births). That's 97 places below its 2011 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 Brooklyn Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Brooklyn the strongest states are Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #17 | 631 |
| 2 | Louisiana | #37 | 749 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #38 | 697 |
| 4 | Wyoming | #38 | 67 |
| 5 | Michigan | #40 | 1,490 |
| 6 | Alabama | #40 | 777 |
| 7 | Georgia | #41 | 1,521 |
| 8 | Arkansas | #44 | 474 |
| 9 | South Dakota | #45 | 140 |
| 10 | Utah | #45 | 708 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #174 | 906 |
| 2 | New Jersey | #145 | 494 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | #135 | 71 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | #120 | 442 |
| 5 | New Hampshire | #108 | 115 |
| 6 | California | #91 | 3,419 |
| 7 | Oklahoma | #86 | 446 |
| 8 | Connecticut | #84 | 307 |
| 9 | Florida | #81 | 1,772 |
| 10 | Vermont | #79 | 35 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Brooklyn in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brooklynn | Water: Stream. | Female | English |
| Brooklynne | Water: Stream. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Brooklyn?
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 Brooklyn to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Brooklyn against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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