Humanverse

Sharon vs Shauna

American parents have registered 726,130 Sharons since 1880, against 28,121 Shaunas. Sharon is still ahead, with 179 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sharon against Shauna, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sharon Shauna

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

Sharon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1900 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Sharon had 1,027 and Shauna had 730.

Side by side

  Sharon Shauna
Total US births 726,13028,121
Most in one year 28,5901,416
Babies in 2025 17911
Estimated living today 545,00026,000
Median age today 6945
Peak year 19471979
Best rank 9th girls189th girls
Rank in 2025 1,250th8,860th
First recorded 19001938
Girls / boys 723,024 / 3,10628,071 / 50

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 Sharons alive today are over 69; half the Shaunas are over 45. That is 24 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 Sharon Shauna
Ireland 10,3756,795
Scotland 5,036281
England and Wales 1,0203,070
France 2,570495
Belgium 76987
Northern Ireland 35391

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: Sharon and Shauna.