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Shane vs Sharleen

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 2,623 Sharleens. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shane Sharleen

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 98 years in which either name was published, Shane for 73 years and Sharleen for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Shane Sharleen
Total US births 196,1662,623
Most in one year 5,931133
Babies in 2025 439under 5
Estimated living today 184,0002,000
Median age today 3860
Peak year 19731951
Best rank 54th boys765th girls
Rank in 2025 635thunranked
First recorded 19331918
Girls / boys 3,583 / 192,5832,623 / 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 Sharleens alive today are over 60; half the Shanes are over 38. That is 22 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 Sharleen
Ireland 22,07533
England and Wales 6,77425
Scotland 86473
France 470335

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 Sharleen.