Shelia — girls' name

What the Data Says About Shelia

The Social Security Administration has registered 47,780 babies named Shelia between 1915 and 2023, spanning 109 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Shelia currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2023. The name reached its historical peak in 1959, when 2,283 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shelia performed strongest in the 1960s, accumulating 18,443 births during that ten-year window. Across the 12 decades of recorded activity, Shelia shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 4,034 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and Alabama. In total, SSA state-level files list Shelia in 41 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shelia 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 47,780 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.