Shelby — #656 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Shelby

The Social Security Administration has registered 148,382 babies named Shelby between 1913 and 2024, spanning 112 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Shelby currently holds the #656 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1991, when 10,220 babies received it in a single year. Shelby is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 16,404 additional births since 1880.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shelby performed strongest in the 1990s, accumulating 71,994 births during that ten-year window. Across the 12 decades of recorded activity, Shelby shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 13,431 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Florida. In total, SSA state-level files list Shelby in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shelby 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 148,382 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.