Humanverse

Sheila vs Sheralyn

American parents have registered 239,422 Sheilas since 1880, against 580 Sheralyns. Sheila is still ahead, with 65 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sheila against Sheralyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sheila Sheralyn

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

Sheila has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1907 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1993, when Sheila had 543 and Sheralyn had 6.

Side by side

  Sheila Sheralyn
Total US births 239,422580
Most in one year 8,80724
Babies in 2025 65under 5
Estimated living today 190,000480
Median age today 6361
Peak year 19621956
Best rank 52nd girls2,249th girls
Rank in 2025 2,645thunranked
First recorded 19071940
Girls / boys 238,774 / 648580 / 0

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 Sheralyns are over 61. That is 2 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 Sheila Sheralyn
England and Wales 2193

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: Sheila and Sheralyn.