Humanverse

Shannon vs Shaylie

American parents have registered 348,161 Shannons since 1880, against 640 Shaylies. Shannon is still ahead, with 116 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shannon against Shaylie, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shannon Shaylie

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

Shannon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Shannon had 331 and Shaylie had 18.

Side by side

  Shannon Shaylie
Total US births 348,161640
Most in one year 16,11837
Babies in 2025 116under 5
Estimated living today 326,000630
Median age today 4720
Peak year 19702008
Best rank 22nd girls4,179th girls
Rank in 2025 2,387thunranked
First recorded 18811990
Girls / boys 295,782 / 52,379640 / 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 Shannons alive today are over 47; half the Shaylies are over 20. That is 27 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 Shannon Shaylie
France 2,62075

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: Shannon and Shaylie.