Humanverse

Shaila vs Shane

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 3,260 Shailas. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shaila 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

Shane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1933 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Shaila had 241 and Shane had 1,900.

Side by side

  Shaila Shane
Total US births 3,260196,166
Most in one year 2415,931
Babies in 2025 25439
Estimated living today 3,200184,000
Median age today 1838
Peak year 20101973
Best rank 1,035th girls54th boys
Rank in 2025 5,099th635th
First recorded 19601933
Girls / boys 3,260 / 03,583 / 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 Shailas are over 18. That is 20 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 Shaila Shane
England and Wales 946,774
France 55470

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: Shaila and Shane.