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Shaniyah vs Shaun

American parents have registered 73,610 Shauns since 1880, against 3,057 Shaniyahs. Shaun is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shaniyah against Shaun, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shaniyah Shaun

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

Shaun has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1935 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Shaniyah had 213 and Shaun had 554.

Side by side

  Shaniyah Shaun
Total US births 3,05773,610
Most in one year 2236,221
Babies in 2025 2479
Estimated living today 3,00068,000
Median age today 1743
Peak year 20071978
Best rank 1,147th girls52nd boys
Rank in 2025 5,238th1,942nd
First recorded 19951935
Girls / boys 3,057 / 03,129 / 70,481

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 Shauns alive today are over 43; half the Shaniyahs are over 17. That is 26 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 Shaniyah Shaun
England and Wales 1176,311

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: Shaniyah and Shaun.