The baby name Breed is a Unisex name , 1 syllables long and is pronounced /briːd/.
Breed is English in Origin.
The baby name Breed is a Unisex name , 1 syllables long and is pronounced /briːd/.
Breed is English in Origin.
Breed is an English word- and surname-based given name tracing to Old English brēdan, "to nourish, rear, bring forth." Through Middle English, the verb yielded the noun breed, meaning "lineage, stock, kind," so the name carries overtones of nurturing and ancestry. In Dutch and Afrikaans breed also means "broad," echoing a Germanic semantic field of breadth and expansiveness, which some modern bearers embrace as an added meaning.
As a forename it is rare, arising in the 19th-20th centuries as a transferred surname in Britain and especially the United States. The family name is well attested in colonial New England and survives in place memory via Breed's Hill in Massachusetts. Usable for any gender, Breed often shortens to Bree. Related or stylistic variants include Brede (a Scandinavian given name meaning "broad"), Breeden/Breedon as surname-style elaborations, and the spelling Breede.
Breed is an extremely rare name. Across our dataset of national birth registries and international name records, Breed appears only 11 times in total — found in 8 countries. If you're considering it, you'd be giving your child a name almost nobody else has.
Based on birth registration data from national statistics agencies.
| Country | Gender | Year | Rank | Born | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BW | Boys | 0 | #154 | 1 | 4,685 |
| NG | 0 | #272 | 1 | 5,926 | |
| BR | 0 | #360 | 1 | 5,969 | |
| KW | Boys | 0 | #806 | 1 | 18,755 |
| NG | Boys | 0 | #1,001 | 1 | 16,906 |
| MY | Boys | 0 | #1,181 | 2 | 25,439 |
| TR | 0 | #1,254 | 1 | 19,440 | |
| ZA | Boys | 0 | #1,271 | 2 | 25,619 |
| SA | Boys | 0 | #1,691 | 1 | 28,008 |
Breed is popular in 8 countries — most recent births per country:
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