Humanverse

Shiloh vs Shira

American parents have registered 24,531 Shilohs since 1880, against 5,815 Shiras. Shiloh is still ahead, with 2,318 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shiloh against Shira, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shiloh Shira

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 80 years in which either name was published, Shiloh for 48 years and Shira for 32 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Shiloh Shira
Total US births 24,5315,815
Most in one year 2,318159
Babies in 2025 2,31879
Estimated living today 24,0005,600
Median age today 728
Peak year 20242009
Best rank 260th girls1,463rd girls
Rank in 2025 281st2,298th
First recorded 19691941
Girls / boys 15,117 / 9,4145,815 / 0

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 Shiras alive today are over 28; half the Shilohs are over 7. That is 21 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 Shiloh Shira
England and Wales 1,495220
France 235180

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: Shiloh and Shira.