Shelton
The boy's name Shelton has been in the national records since 1880, with 12,145 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 4,707th. About 8,400 Sheltons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Shelton boys named Shelton
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 12,145
- Estimated living today
- 8,400
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1972
- Best rank
- 596th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,707th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 172 / 11,973
How old the living Sheltons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 12,145 babies given the name since 1880, about 8,400 are alive — 69 in every hundred. Roughly 810 of them are children and 1,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 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 Old English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sheltons
- Shelton Benjamin (born 1975)American professional wrestler
- Shelton Fabre (born 1963)Catholic archbishop
People named Shelton with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Shelton is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Shelton is most concentrated in Louisiana (7.7×), North Carolina (7.2×), Mississippi (5.6×), Virginia (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1972
The most popular boys’ names the year Shelton peaked:
Shelton elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Shelton | 125 | 2,909th |
| England and Wales boys | Shelton | 14 | 2,174th |
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.
Related names
Shelton 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.