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Shawn vs Shayna

American parents have registered 339,597 Shawns since 1880, against 16,272 Shaynas. Shawn is still ahead, with 412 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shawn Shayna

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

Shawn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1931 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Shawn had 412 and Shayna had 72.

Side by side

  Shawn Shayna
Total US births 339,59716,272
Most in one year 14,688676
Babies in 2025 41272
Estimated living today 310,00016,000
Median age today 4731
Peak year 19711991
Best rank 28th boys380th girls
Rank in 2025 681st2,458th
First recorded 19311957
Girls / boys 33,055 / 306,54216,267 / 5

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 Shawns alive today are over 47; half the Shaynas are over 31. That is 16 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 Shawn Shayna
France 1,1953,370
England and Wales 878419
Belgium 261114
Scotland 1753
Ireland 5141

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: Shawn and Shayna.