Humanverse

Shia

Shia reached its high-water mark in 2024 at number 1,196, and has been recorded 3,348 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,358th. About 3,300 Shias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Shia boys named Shia

Girls and boys called Shia

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,093 girls and 2,255 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 34 to 138.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 27 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
3,348
Estimated living today
3,300
Median age today
10
Peak year
2024
Best rank
1,196th
Rank in 2025
1,358th
First recorded
1960
Girls / boys
1,093 / 2,255

How old the living Shias are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 3,348 babies given the name since 1960, about 3,300 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 2,800 of them are children and 4 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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.

Notable Shias

People named Shia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Shia is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Shia is most concentrated in New York (8.0×), California (1.5×), Florida (1.1×), New Jersey (1.0×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2024

The most popular boys’ names the year Shia peaked:

All the names of 2024

Shia elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Shia 150 1,534th
England and Wales girls Shia 34 3,536th

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

Shia against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Shia with a name of your own

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.