This article looks at how common Brady is as a last name in Ireland and the United States from the 19th century to the present day.
You’ll learn the meaning and origins of the Brady surname while exploring some notable and famous people that held it.
I use census records, emigration lists, and military archives to uncover fascinating patterns. If you’re studying your genealogy, check out my sources at the end of the post so you can do your own research.
How Common Is Brady As A Surname In Ireland?
The Irish government doesn’t publish detailed surname statistics for recent years. The best that they give us is the ten most common surnames of babies born in the previous year. Brady is common but not enough to break the top ten.
Thankfully, an Irish genealogist named Seán Murphy studied the names in national phone books published in the 1990s. His estimates aren’t as accurate as a census, but they are still a good way to get an estimate of numbers.
Brady was ranked 59 in the top one hundred names in this decade with a total of 12,900 entries.
This graphic shows how it ranks compared to the 1st, 33rd, 66th, and 100th entries in the survey:
Brady In The Early 1900s
The Irish have traditionally emigrated to Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia in recent centuries. They were driven by various factors like political upheaval, scarcity of work, and food deprivation.
The Great Irish Famine, which happened from 1845 to 1852, caused the largest wave of emigration. The potato blight was a disaster for Ireland because it destroyed the main food source for a large proportion of the people.
So, let’s focus on the early 1900s.
I used online archives to calculate the total numbers by surname. I consider these estimates due to some percentage of transcription errors. So, I’ve rounded the numbers to the nearest fifty.
There were 10,750 residents named Brady on the island in 1911.
Ten years earlier, Brady had about 10,65 residents in the 1901 census.
Population Estimates In The 1890s
A study of Irish surnames was conducted in 1890 by the head of the Civil Registrations Office. It was published as a “Special Report on Surnames In Ireland.”
The survey estimated that there were about 11,600 people named Brady in the country.
Emigration To America After The Irish Famine
The Irish have traditionally emigrated to Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia in recent centuries. They were driven by various factors like political upheaval, scarcity of work, and food deprivation.
The Great Irish Famine, which happened from 1845 to 1852, caused the largest wave of emigration. The potato blight was a disaster for Ireland because it destroyed the main food source for a large proportion of the people.
I studied the Brady name in the shipping passenger lists arriving in New York during this period. The departures were from both Ireland and England.
This picture shows how the numbers rose and fell in the years after the famine.
Estimating Rank In The United States
The United States publishes high-level details from the 2010 census that includes the totals of surnames with over one hundred bearers.
I reviewed the list to identify which names are predominantly Irish in origin to provide an estimate of the rankings of Irish names in the United States.
Historically, some Irish families with Gaelic surnames took English-sounding names as translations under the influence of colonization.
As these names also have English origins, they will have been brought to the United States by both British and Irish immigrants. Because the census doesn’t ask about specific European origin (e.g. England vs Ireland), it’s impossible to identify the proportion with Irish heritage.
For the purpose of this website, I’ve mostly excluded names that have varying origins when considering “Irish” names in the U.S. censuses.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s look at how Brady ranks in America.
How Common Is Brady As A Last Name In The United States?
Based on the 2010 U.S. census, the name Brady ranks about 450 among Irish names in America with 73,145 bearers.
Brady In Historic Census Years
It is fascinating to examine how the prevalence of a surname shifts over the course of time in a country as young as the United States. As well as immigration, this reflects other demographic shifts across the nation. Factors include higher child mortality rates and longer life expectancy.
The historic census records have been transcribed and digitized. I used online archives to run counts of surname populations.
But the totals can’t be exactly accurate due to transcription errors. So, I’ve rounded the numbers to the nearest 50 in the graph below.
This picture shows the numbers every twenty years from 1860 to 1940.
These are the numbers in the graph:
- 1860: 14,250
- 1880: 23,050
- 1900: 31,150
- 1920: 36,150
- 1940: 41,750
Brady In World War II
During World War Two, approximately 8.3 million men and women joined the ranks of the United States Army. Many were of Irish descent. Some had even been born in Ireland and emigrated.
There were registration records for 2,605 soldiers named Brady who enlisted between 1938 and 1946.
Thirty-seven of them were born in Ireland.
Brady Surname: Meaning And Origin
The origin of Brady is from the Gaelic name Ó Brádaigh or Mac Brádaigh. The “Ó“ in Irish names means “descendant of” while “Mac” means “son of”.
The second part of this surname is from the personal name Brádach. This comes from the Gaelic word brád and refers to someone who is spirited.
One powerful Brady family was a Mac Brádaigh branch who were chiefs in Cavan. One of their number, Richard Brady, was appointed a bishop by Pope Gregory XIII in the late sixteenth century.
Famous Or Historic People Named Brady
Aside from Bishop Richard Brady, here are some other notable people with the family name:
- Mathew Brady (about 1822-1896): American photographer who documented the Civil War. His photograph of Lincoln is on the five-dollar bill.
- Nicholas Brady (1878-1930) and Genevieve Garvan Brady (1880-1938): Nicholas converted to catholicism before marrying his wife, Genevieve. Both became significant philanthropists due to wealth from a business empire established by Nicholas’ father Anthony.
- Al Brady (1910-1937): started his short life of crime robbing grocery stores in Indiana before progressing to banks. He and his three associates were known as the Brady Gang. After shooting two law enforcement officers, Al Brady became Public Enemy Number 1. The gang was ambushed and shot dead in Bangor, Maine.
- Eugene Brady (1928-2011): a U.S. marine who was awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star for evacuating wounded soldiers under heavy fire during the Vietnam War.
Sources
External Research
The Ireland 1990s estimates are from Seán J. Murphy’s research paper.
The population estimates of 1890 are based on the “Special Report on Surnames in Ireland“, published in 1909.
The population figures for the 2010 U.S. Census come from a file provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Internal Research
Some of the population numbers are based on my own research and calculations using online archives. I’ve rounded those numbers to the nearest 50 to account for transcription errors and other technical issues with online databases of this type.
The Irish census estimates for 1901 and 1911 are my calculations based on the Irish National Archives
I plotted the emigration figures from 1845 to 1854 based on calculations from the archives of the New York Passenger Lists (1820-1957).