Humanverse

Shaun vs Shaylen

American parents have registered 73,610 Shauns since 1880, against 613 Shaylens. Shaun is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shaun 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

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 2023, when Shaun had 120 and Shaylen had 10.

Side by side

  Shaun Shaylen
Total US births 73,610613
Most in one year 6,22145
Babies in 2025 79under 5
Estimated living today 68,000610
Median age today 4320
Peak year 19782002
Best rank 52nd boys3,461st girls
Rank in 2025 1,942ndunranked
First recorded 19351984
Girls / boys 3,129 / 70,481581 / 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 Shauns alive today are over 43; half the Shaylens are over 20. That is 23 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 Shaun Shaylen
England and Wales 6,31142

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: Shaun and Shaylen.