Brooke is the English word for a small stream, with the silent -e marking it as a name rather than a noun. The word comes from the Old English brōc, originally meaning "swamp" or "marshland" before narrowing to the modern sense of "small stream."
Brooke was very popular in the 1990s in the U.S. — peaking at #43 in 1993 — and has been declining since. Today it sits in the U.S. top 470. Brooke Shields was the iconic Brooke of the late 20th century; the name carries her quiet poise.
Brooke does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Brooke reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.