Shy — unisex name

What the Data Says About Shy

The Social Security Administration has registered 427 babies named Shy between 1973 and 2025, spanning 53 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Shy currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2025. The name reached its historical peak in 1997, when 32 babies received it in a single year. Shy is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 51 additional births since 1994.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shy performed strongest in the 2000s, accumulating 144 births during that ten-year window. Across the 6 decades of recorded activity, Shy shows a clear decline from its mid-century high.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shy 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 427 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.