Shelly
Shelly reached its high-water mark in 1964 at number 101, and has been recorded 86,610 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 5,722nd. About 77,000 Shellys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 56.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Shelly boys named Shelly
Girls and boys called Shelly
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Shelly crossed from boys to girls in 1937, and has stayed there for 87 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 98 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 86,610
- Estimated living today
- 77,000
- Median age today
- 56
- Peak year
- 1964
- Best rank
- 101st
- Rank in 2025
- 5,722nd
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 84,420 / 2,190
How old the living Shellys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 86,610 babies given the name since 1882, about 77,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 720 of them are children and 10,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1969 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 the name comes from
Origin a surname
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Shellys
- Shelly Manne (1920–1984)American jazz drummer
- Shelly Martinez (born 1980)American professional wrestler, professional wrestling valet, model, and actress
- Shelly Cole (born 1975)American actress
- Shelly Kagan (born 1956)American philosopher
People named Shelly with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shelly is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Shelly is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.7×), Oklahoma (2.4×), Montana (2.3×), Wyoming (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1964
The most popular girls’ names the year Shelly peaked:
Shelly elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Shelly | 770 | 1,105th |
| England and Wales girls | Shelly | 185 | 983rd |
| Scotland girls | Shelly | 122 | 286th |
| Belgium girls | Shelly | 109 | 389th |
| Ireland girls | Shelly | 44 | 326th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Shelly | 3 | 343rd |
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.
Shelly: rank by region
In 2000, Shelly was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Shelly | 648 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Related names
Shelly against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.