Shams — #3786 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Shams

The Social Security Administration has registered 300 babies named Shams between 1999 and 2024, spanning 26 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Shams currently holds the #3786 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2024, when 40 babies received it in a single year. Shams is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 99 additional births since 1993.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shams performed strongest in the 2020s, accumulating 137 births during that ten-year window. Across the 4 decades of recorded activity, Shams shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 13 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Illinois and Michigan. In total, SSA state-level files list Shams in 4 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shams in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 300 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.