Humanverse

Sharon vs Shaylin

American parents have registered 726,130 Sharons since 1880, against 1,901 Shaylins. Sharon is still ahead, with 179 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sharon against Shaylin, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sharon Shaylin

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

Sharon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1900 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Sharon had 378 and Shaylin had 80.

Side by side

  Sharon Shaylin
Total US births 726,1301,901
Most in one year 28,59091
Babies in 2025 1797
Estimated living today 545,0001,900
Median age today 6922
Peak year 19472003
Best rank 9th girls1,985th girls
Rank in 2025 1,250th11,932nd
First recorded 19001977
Girls / boys 723,024 / 3,1061,891 / 10

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 Sharons alive today are over 69; half the Shaylins are over 22. That is 47 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 Sharon Shaylin
England and Wales 1,0206

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: Sharon and Shaylin.