Shelah vs Shelby
American parents have registered 165,279 Shelbys since 1880, against 510 Shelahs. Shelby is still ahead, with 485 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Shelah Shelby
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
Shelby has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.
The closest they came was 1965, when Shelah had 12 and Shelby had 388.
Side by side
| Shelah | Shelby | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 510 | 165,279 |
| Most in one year | 15 | 10,744 |
| Babies in 2025 | under 5 | 485 |
| Estimated living today | 440 | 150,000 |
| Median age today | 54 | 30 |
| Peak year | 1974 | 1991 |
| Best rank | 4,041st girls | 33rd girls |
| Rank in 2025 | unranked | 649th |
| First recorded | 1935 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 510 / 0 | 148,830 / 16,449 |
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 Shelahs alive today are over 54; half the Shelbys are over 30. That is 24 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 | Shelah | Shelby |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 3 | 3,294 |
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: Shelah and Shelby.