Shiv
Shiv reached its high-water mark in 2024 at number 1,776, and has been recorded 2,193 times in all. Its origin is given as Sanskrit. In 2025 it ranked 1,753rd. About 2,200 Shivs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 13.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Shiv
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,193
- Estimated living today
- 2,200
- Median age today
- 13
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 1,776th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,753rd
- First recorded
- 1984
How old the living Shivs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,193 babies given the name since 1984, about 2,200 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 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 Sanskrit
Variant of Shiva, from Sanskrit शिव (“the auspicious one”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Shivs
- Shiv Nadar (born 1945)Indian businessman
People named Shiv with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shiv is most common
Across the country Shiv is recorded 0.35 times per 100,000 births, so these are the states above that line. Only states with 50 or more recorded Shivs are ranked here: below that a handful of births makes a rate that moves on chance alone.
Counts favour the big states, which is why the same few lead this list for almost every name.
Births recorded in each state since 1910. A name given to fewer than five babies in one state in one year is not published, so a name's quietest states are missing from this rather than showing zero. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular boys’ names the year Shiv peaked:
Shiv elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Shiv | 714 | 874th |
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.
Shiv among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Shiv | 6 | 7 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Shiv 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.