Humanverse

Shane vs Shanice

American parents have registered 196,166 Shanes since 1880, against 9,591 Shanices. Shane is still ahead, with 439 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shane against Shanice, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shane Shanice

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Shane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1933 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1992, when Shane had 4,909 and Shanice had 1,859.

Side by side

  Shane Shanice
Total US births 196,1669,591
Most in one year 5,9311,859
Babies in 2025 4397
Estimated living today 184,0009,400
Median age today 3832
Peak year 19731992
Best rank 54th boys162nd girls
Rank in 2025 635th11,932nd
First recorded 19331968
Girls / boys 3,583 / 192,5839,586 / 5

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Shanes alive today are over 38; half the Shanices are over 32. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Shane Shanice
Ireland 22,075137
England and Wales 6,7741,659
France 4701,120
Northern Ireland 1,07553
Scotland 864133
Belgium 28291

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Shane and Shanice.