Humanverse

Shakiya vs Shawn

American parents have registered 339,597 Shawns since 1880, against 804 Shakiyas. Shawn is still ahead, with 412 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shakiya against Shawn, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shakiya Shawn

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

Shawn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1931 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2007, when Shakiya had 48 and Shawn had 2,376.

Side by side

  Shakiya Shawn
Total US births 804339,597
Most in one year 5014,688
Babies in 2025 under 5412
Estimated living today 790310,000
Median age today 2447
Peak year 20031971
Best rank 2,999th girls28th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked681st
First recorded 19781931
Girls / boys 804 / 033,055 / 306,542

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 Shawns alive today are over 47; half the Shakiyas are over 24. That is 23 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 Shawn
England and Wales 17878

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 Shawn.