Shirley

girls’ nameFadedCompare

Shirley is outside the top 1,000 in 2024, with 151 births. Its best rank was 2nd, in 1935–1936.

Rank in 2024: —outside the top 1,000
Births in 2024: 1510.01% of girls
Peak year: 193542,365 births
Best rank: #2first in 1935
Since 1880: 695,797people given the name

Babies named Shirley, by year of birthgirls

The story in the numbers

686,246 girls have been named Shirley in the United States since 1880, according to Social Security records. The busiest single year was 1935, with 42,365 births — 4.0% of all girls recorded that year.

The name has all but left use: 151 births in 2024, against 42,365 at the peak.

Half of everyone given the name was born by 1939, and the 1930s alone account for 33%. It has spent 127 of 145 years in the top 1,000, 46 of them in the top 100 and 14 in the top 10.

It is overwhelmingly a girl’s name: 9,551 boys have also been given it, 1.4% of the total.

Rank among girls, year by year

Higher on the chart = more popularrank (gaps = outside the top 1,000)

By decade

Decade	girls named Shirley
1880s	179
1890s	535
1900s	1,710
1910s	12,742
1920s	98,601
1930s	229,378
1940s	171,780
1950s	108,807
1960s	38,077
1970s	10,520
1980s	5,073
1990s	3,692
2000s	2,734
2010s	1,752
2020s	666

In 1935, its biggest year

Shirley was the 2nd most given girl’s name that year. The top five girls’ names of 1935 were Mary, Shirley, Barbara, Betty and Patricia. See all of 1935.

Names that rose and fell with Shirley

Same sex, most similar popularity curve over 145 years, in five-year steps — the shape of the line, not the size.

Other spellings in the data

What this page does not tell you. The Social Security data records how many babies were given a name, not what the name means or where it comes from — so neither do we. Counts cover people with a Social Security number; names given to fewer than five babies in a year are withheld. More on the data.