Humanverse

Shaw

Shaw is a boy's name that peaked in 2020, when it was the 2,980th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 4,707th. About 1,300 Shaws are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Shaw boys named Shaw

By the numbers

Total US births
1,398
Estimated living today
1,300
Median age today
24
Peak year
2020
Best rank
2,980th
Rank in 2025
4,707th
First recorded
1914
Girls / boys
62 / 1,336

How old the living Shaws are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,398 babies given the name since 1914, about 1,300 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 530 of them are children and 19 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where Shaw is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Shaw is most concentrated in California (8.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2020

The most popular boys’ names the year Shaw peaked:

All the names of 2020

Shaw elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Shaw 50 1,519th
Scotland boys Shaw 6 720th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Related names

Shaw against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Shaw with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.