Humanverse

Shane vs Shayleen

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 519 Shayleens. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shane Shayleen

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 2021, when Shane had 618 and Shayleen had 9.

Side by side

  Shane Shayleen
Total US births 196,166519
Most in one year 5,93123
Babies in 2025 439under 5
Estimated living today 184,000510
Median age today 3828
Peak year 19731992
Best rank 54th boys4,382nd girls
Rank in 2025 635thunranked
First recorded 19331967
Girls / boys 3,583 / 192,583519 / 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 Shayleens are over 28. That is 10 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 Shayleen
France 47015

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 Shayleen.