Humanverse

Shimon vs Shivanya

American parents have registered 5,492 Shimons since 1880, against 111 Shivanyas. Shimon is still ahead, with 241 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Shimon against Shivanya, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Shimon Shivanya

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

Shimon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1947 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Shimon had 183 and Shivanya had 16.

Side by side

  Shimon Shivanya
Total US births 5,492111
Most in one year 25516
Babies in 2025 24115
Estimated living today 5,400110
Median age today 134
Peak year 20242019
Best rank 915th boys7,025th girls
Rank in 2025 960th7,133rd
First recorded 19472016
Girls / boys 0 / 5,492111 / 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 Shimons alive today are over 13; half the Shivanyas are over 4. That is 9 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Shimon Shivanya
England and Wales 41256

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: Shimon and Shivanya.