Humanverse

Shadrach vs Shane

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 785 Shadraches. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shadrach against Shane, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shadrach Shane

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 93 years in which either name was published, Shane for 91 years and Shadrach for 2 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Shadrach Shane
Total US births 785196,166
Most in one year 265,931
Babies in 2025 10439
Estimated living today 750184,000
Median age today 2238
Peak year 20081973
Best rank 3,921st boys54th boys
Rank in 2025 7,679th635th
First recorded 19161933
Girls / boys 0 / 7853,583 / 192,583

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Shanes alive today are over 38; half the Shadraches are over 22. That is 16 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Shadrach Shane
England and Wales 546,774
France 5470

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Shadrach and Shane.