Humanverse

Shane vs Shaniya

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 6,541 Shaniyas. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shane Shaniya

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 Shane had 1,900 and Shaniya had 517.

Side by side

  Shane Shaniya
Total US births 196,1666,541
Most in one year 5,931517
Babies in 2025 43928
Estimated living today 184,0006,500
Median age today 3819
Peak year 19732010
Best rank 54th boys565th girls
Rank in 2025 635th4,758th
First recorded 19331982
Girls / boys 3,583 / 192,5836,541 / 0

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 Shaniyas are over 19. That is 19 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 Shane Shaniya
England and Wales 6,774354
France 4705

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: Shane and Shaniya.