Shanita — girls' name

What the Data Says About Shanita

The Social Security Administration has registered 3,450 babies named Shanita between 1959 and 2008, spanning 50 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Shanita currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2008. The name reached its historical peak in 1978, when 184 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shanita performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 1,636 births during that ten-year window. Across the 6 decades of recorded activity, Shanita shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 250 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Illinois and Michigan. In total, SSA state-level files list Shanita in 23 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shanita 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 3,450 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.