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Shaheen vs Shawna

American parents have registered 45,640 Shawnas since 1880, against 735 Shaheens. But in 2025 it was Shaheen that was commoner, 22 babies to 9.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shaheen against Shawna, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shaheen Shawna

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 84 years in which either name was published, Shawna for 82 years and Shaheen for 2 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Shaheen Shawna
Total US births 73545,640
Most in one year 272,090
Babies in 2025 229
Estimated living today 71043,000
Median age today 3145
Peak year 19901977
Best rank 2,780th boys139th girls
Rank in 2025 4,539th10,107th
First recorded 19711941
Girls / boys 143 / 59245,531 / 109

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 Shawnas alive today are over 45; half the Shaheens are over 31. That is 14 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Shaheen Shawna
France 250155
England and Wales 139154

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: Shaheen and Shawna.