Shelby

At the 2020 census, 11,673 Americans bore the surname Shelby — 3,008th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 25,600.

By the numbers

People: 11,673
Rank: 3,008th
How common: 1 in 25,600
Per 100,000: 3.9

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From a medieval name, of origin, yet likely an alteration of Middle English Selby, Salibi (“dweller of the willow place”), from salwe (“willow, sallow”) +.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Shelby described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 55.4%
Black, not Hispanic 35.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Shelby

Richard Shelby (born 1934)United States Senator from Alabama
Carroll Shelby (1923–2012)American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur
John Shelby Spong (1931–2021)American bishop
Isaac Shelby (1750–1826)American politician
Joseph O. Shelby (1830–1897)Confederate States Army general

People named Shelby with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Shelby

Also a first name

Shelby has been given to 165,279 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1991. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.