Humanverse

Shane vs Shaylen

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 613 Shaylens. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shane Shaylen

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 2023, when Shane had 539 and Shaylen had 10.

Side by side

  Shane Shaylen
Total US births 196,166613
Most in one year 5,93145
Babies in 2025 439under 5
Estimated living today 184,000610
Median age today 3820
Peak year 19732002
Best rank 54th boys3,461st girls
Rank in 2025 635thunranked
First recorded 19331984
Girls / boys 3,583 / 192,583581 / 32

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 Shaylens are over 20. That is 18 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 Shane Shaylen
England and Wales 6,77442

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 Shaylen.