Shirley

At the 2020 census, 25,421 Americans bore the surname Shirley — 1,355th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 11,800.

By the numbers

People: 25,421
Rank: 1,355th
How common: 1 in 11,800
Per 100,000: 8.5

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 79.3%
Black, not Hispanic 9.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 3.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Shirley

Anne Shirley (1918–1993)American actress
Don Shirley (1927–2013)American-Jamaican jazz pianist and composer
Steve Shirley (1933–2025)British businesswoman and philanthropist
Dorothy Shirley (born 1939)British athlete
James Shirley (1596–1666)English writer
Robert Shirley (1581–1628)English soldier, diplomat and adventurer (c.1581-1628)
Kevin Shirley (born 1960)South African record producer and engineer
William Shirley (1694–1771)British governor of Massachusetts and then of the Bahamas

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

Surnames like Shirley

Also a first name

Shirley has been given to 695,934 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1935. 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.