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Shirley vs Shivangi

American parents have registered 695,934 Shirleys since 1880, against 149 Shivangis. Shirley is still ahead, with 133 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shirley against Shivangi, 1880 to 2025 0 12.5k 25k 37.5k 50k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shirley Shivangi

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

Shirley 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 1998, when Shirley had 293 and Shivangi had 13.

Side by side

  Shirley Shivangi
Total US births 695,934149
Most in one year 42,80115
Babies in 2025 133under 5
Estimated living today 308,000150
Median age today 7626
Peak year 19351992
Best rank 2nd girls6,008th girls
Rank in 2025 1,581stunranked
First recorded 18801992
Girls / boys 686,383 / 9,551149 / 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 Shirleys alive today are over 76; half the Shivangis are over 26. That is 50 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 Shirley Shivangi
England and Wales 26119

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: Shirley and Shivangi.