Shannon
The girl's name Shannon has been in the national records since 1881, with 348,161 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,387th. About 326,000 Shannons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 47.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Shannon boys named Shannon
Girls and boys called Shannon
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Shannon crossed from boys to girls in 1937, and has stayed there for 89 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 94% girls, and in 2025 it was 65%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 109 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 348,161
- Estimated living today
- 326,000
- Median age today
- 47
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 22nd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,387th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 295,782 / 52,379
How old the living Shannons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 348,161 babies given the name since 1881, about 326,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 5,800 of them are children and 8,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1978 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname, a place name
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Shannons
- Shannon Lucid (born 1943)American biochemist and retired NASA astronaut
- Shannon Elizabeth (born 1973)American actress
- Shannon Leto (born 1970)American drummer
- Shannon Lee (born 1969)American actress
- Shannon Walker (born 1965)American scientist and NASA astronaut
- Shannon Miller (born 1977)American artistic gymnast
- Shannon Boxx (born 1977)American soccer player
- Shannon Tweed (born 1957)Canadian actress and model
People named Shannon with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shannon is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Shannon is most concentrated in Alaska (1.9×), Hawaii (1.6×), Oregon (1.4×), Wyoming (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1970
The most popular girls’ names the year Shannon peaked:
Shannon elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Shannon | 25,520 | 11th |
| Scotland girls | Shannon | 5,241 | 4th |
| Ireland girls | Shannon | 3,642 | 14th |
| France girls | Shannon | 2,555 | 272nd |
| New Zealand girls | Shannon | 2,446 | 31st |
| Northern Ireland girls | Shannon | 1,654 | 2nd |
| New Zealand boys | Shannon | 1,082 | 54th |
| Belgium girls | Shannon | 479 | 220th |
| England and Wales boys | Shannon | 78 | 1,168th |
| France boys | Shannon | 65 | 5,689th |
| Scotland boys | Shannon | 8 | 336th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Shannon: rank by region
In 2012, Shannon was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Shannon | 276 | 11 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Shannon among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Shannon | 1,666 | 2,000 |
| the Netherlands boys | Shannon | 62 | 106 |
| Finland girls | Shannon | 12 | 33 |
| Finland boys | Shannon | 5 | 10 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Shannon against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.