Humanverse

Shaun vs Shauna

American parents have registered 73,610 Shauns since 1880, against 28,121 Shaunas. Shaun is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Shaun 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

Of the 91 years in which either name was published, Shaun for 82 years and Shauna for 9 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Shaun Shauna
Total US births 73,61028,121
Most in one year 6,2211,416
Babies in 2025 7911
Estimated living today 68,00026,000
Median age today 4345
Peak year 19781979
Best rank 52nd boys189th girls
Rank in 2025 1,942nd8,860th
First recorded 19351938
Girls / boys 3,129 / 70,48128,071 / 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 Shaunas alive today are over 45; half the Shauns are over 43. That is 2 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 Shaun Shauna
England and Wales 6,3113,070
Ireland 1,9016,795
Scotland 4,920281
France 350495
Northern Ireland 174391
Belgium 9887

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: Shaun and Shauna.