Humanverse

Shimon vs Shireen

American parents have registered 5,492 Shimons since 1880, against 1,355 Shireens. Shimon is still ahead, with 241 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shimon against Shireen, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shimon Shireen

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 84 years in which either name was published, Shimon for 50 years and Shireen for 34 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Shimon Shireen
Total US births 5,4921,355
Most in one year 25540
Babies in 2025 24110
Estimated living today 5,4001,200
Median age today 1340
Peak year 20241991
Best rank 915th boys2,886th girls
Rank in 2025 960th9,457th
First recorded 19471923
Girls / boys 0 / 5,4921,355 / 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 Shireens alive today are over 40; half the Shimons are over 13. That is 27 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 Shimon Shireen
England and Wales 412156
France 655

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: Shimon and Shireen.