Humanverse

Shakiya vs Shaun

American parents have registered 73,610 Shauns since 1880, against 804 Shakiyas. Shaun is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shakiya against Shaun, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shakiya Shaun

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

Shaun has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1935 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2003, when Shakiya had 50 and Shaun had 699.

Side by side

  Shakiya Shaun
Total US births 80473,610
Most in one year 506,221
Babies in 2025 under 579
Estimated living today 79068,000
Median age today 2443
Peak year 20031978
Best rank 2,999th girls52nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,942nd
First recorded 19781935
Girls / boys 804 / 03,129 / 70,481

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 Shauns alive today are over 43; half the Shakiyas are over 24. That is 19 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 Shakiya Shaun
England and Wales 176,311

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: Shakiya and Shaun.