Shaun
Shaun is a boy's name that peaked in 1978, when it was the 52nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,942nd. About 68,000 Shauns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 43.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Shaun boys named Shaun
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 73,610
- Estimated living today
- 68,000
- Median age today
- 43
- Peak year
- 1978
- Best rank
- 52nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,942nd
- First recorded
- 1935
- Girls / boys
- 3,129 / 70,481
How old the living Shauns are
born that year still alive today
Of the 73,610 babies given the name since 1935, about 68,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 5,200 of them are children and 1,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1982 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 Irish
A variant of Sean, from Irish Seán, from Old French Jehan, from Latin Johannes, variant of Ioannes, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννης, from Hebrew יוֹחָנָן.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Shauns
- Shaun Wright-Phillips (born 1981)English association football player
- Shaun Murphy (born 1982)English snooker player
- Shaun Maloney (born 1983)Scottish association football player and coach
- Shaun White (born 1986)American snowboarder and skateboarder
- Shaun Toub (born 1963)Iranian-born American actor
- Shaun Bartlett (born 1972)South African footballer
- Shaun Tan (born 1974)Australian illustrator, writer, and animated filmmaker
- Shaun Livingston (born 1985)American basketball player
People named Shaun with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shaun is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Shaun is most concentrated in Hawaii (2.4×), Utah (2.3×), Idaho (1.7×), Massachusetts (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1978
The most popular boys’ names the year Shaun peaked:
Shaun elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Shaun | 6,311 | 76th |
| Scotland boys | Shaun | 4,920 | 36th |
| New Zealand boys | Shaun | 4,397 | 35th |
| Ireland boys | Shaun | 1,901 | 81st |
| France boys | Shaun | 350 | 1,537th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Shaun | 174 | 121st |
| Belgium boys | Shaun | 98 | 779th |
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.
Shaun: rank by region
In 2019, Shaun was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Shaun | 378 | 7 |
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.
Shaun 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Shaun | 19 | 23 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Shaun 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.