Humanverse

Sharlotte vs Shawn

American parents have registered 339,597 Shawns since 1880, against 1,094 Sharlottes. Shawn is still ahead, with 412 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sharlotte against Shawn, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sharlotte Shawn

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 94 years in which either name was published, Shawn for 92 years and Sharlotte for 2 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Sharlotte Shawn
Total US births 1,094339,597
Most in one year 3514,688
Babies in 2025 34412
Estimated living today 950310,000
Median age today 4747
Peak year 20241971
Best rank 4,114th girls28th boys
Rank in 2025 4,172nd681st
First recorded 19301931
Girls / boys 1,094 / 033,055 / 306,542

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.

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 Sharlotte Shawn
England and Wales 51878

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: Sharlotte and Shawn.