Shelby
Shelby is a girl's name that peaked in 1991, when it was the 33rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 649th. About 150,000 Shelbys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 30.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Shelby boys named Shelby
Girls and boys called Shelby
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Shelby crossed from boys to girls in 1936, and has stayed there for 90 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 98% girls, and in 2025 it was 92%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 119 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
- 165,279
- Estimated living today
- 150,000
- Median age today
- 30
- Peak year
- 1991
- Best rank
- 33rd
- Rank in 2025
- 649th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 148,830 / 16,449
How old the living Shelbys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 165,279 babies given the name since 1880, about 150,000 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 19,000 of them are children and 9,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1995 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
From a medieval name, of origin, yet likely an alteration of Middle English Selby, Salibi (“dweller of the willow place”), from salwe (“willow, sallow”) +.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Shelbys
- Shelby Rogers (born 1992)American tennis player
- Shelby McEwen (born 1996)American high jumper
- Shelby Lynne (born 1968)American singer-songwriter
- Shelby Young (born 1992)American actress
- Shelby Foote (1916–2005)American novelist, historian
- Shelby Houlihan (born 1993)American middle- and long-distance runner
- Shelby Moore Cullom (1829–1914)American politician
- Shelby Wilson (born 1937)Olympic wrestler
People named Shelby with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shelby is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Shelby is most concentrated in Kentucky (2.3×), Tennessee (1.9×), Arkansas (1.8×), Alaska (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1991
The most popular girls’ names the year Shelby peaked:
Shelby elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Shelby | 3,177 | 151st |
| France girls | Shelby | 830 | 700th |
| Scotland girls | Shelby | 371 | 127th |
| England and Wales boys | Shelby | 117 | 1,692nd |
| Ireland girls | Shelby | 63 | 464th |
| Belgium girls | Shelby | 43 | 796th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Shelby | 36 | 197th |
| France boys | Shelby | 25 | 3,080th |
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.
Shelby: rank by region
In 2024, Shelby was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Shelby | 411 | 6 |
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.
Related names
Shelby 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.