Humanverse

Shauna vs Shawn

American parents have registered 339,597 Shawns since 1880, against 28,121 Shaunas. Shawn is still ahead, with 412 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shauna against Shawn, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shauna Shawn

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

Shawn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1931 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1945, when Shauna had 21 and Shawn had 25.

Side by side

  Shauna Shawn
Total US births 28,121339,597
Most in one year 1,41614,688
Babies in 2025 11412
Estimated living today 26,000310,000
Median age today 4547
Peak year 19791971
Best rank 189th girls28th boys
Rank in 2025 8,860th681st
First recorded 19381931
Girls / boys 28,071 / 5033,055 / 306,542

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 Shawns alive today are over 47; half the Shaunas are over 45. 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 Shauna Shawn
Ireland 6,79551
England and Wales 3,070878
France 4951,195
Scotland 281175
Belgium 87261

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: Shauna and Shawn.