Sheila vs Shelley

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Sheila Shelley

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 130 years in which either name was published, Sheila for 117 years and Shelley for 13 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

• 1892–1906 Shelley ahead
• 1907–1908 Sheila ahead
• 1909–1910 Shelley ahead
• 1911–2025 Sheila ahead

Side by side

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 Sheilas alive today are over 63; half the Shelleys are over 58. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Sheila the District of Columbia (2.2×), Vermont (1.6×), North Dakota (1.6×)
• Shelley Montana (2.3×), Oregon (2.2×), Washington (2.0×)

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.

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

• Sheila vs Sherry
• Sheila vs Shelby
• Sheila vs Shelly
• Sheila vs Sherri
• Sheila vs Sheryl
• Shelley vs Sherry
• Shelley vs Shelby
• Shelley vs Shelly