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Sharleen vs Shaun

American parents have registered 73,610 Shauns since 1880, against 2,623 Sharleens. Shaun is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sharleen against Shaun, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sharleen Shaun

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

Of the 98 years in which either name was published, Shaun for 73 years and Sharleen for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Sharleen Shaun
Total US births 2,62373,610
Most in one year 1336,221
Babies in 2025 under 579
Estimated living today 2,00068,000
Median age today 6043
Peak year 19511978
Best rank 765th girls52nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,942nd
First recorded 19181935
Girls / boys 2,623 / 03,129 / 70,481

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 Sharleens alive today are over 60; half the Shauns are over 43. That is 17 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 Sharleen Shaun
England and Wales 256,311
Scotland 734,920
Ireland 331,901
France 335350

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: Sharleen and Shaun.