Shaina
Feminine · “beautiful”
Shaina is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 11,992 girls against 18 boys since 1880.
Shaina is Yiddish for beautiful. It is one of the few widely used names taken straight from a Yiddish adjective, and it is still an ordinary word in the language.
How old is the name Shaina?
Shaina first appears in US birth records in 1968 — 57 years ago. The typical Shaina alive today was born around 1992, making them about 33 years old. About 12,000 people named Shaina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shaina most popular?
Shaina peaked in 1987, reaching #319 nationally. Today it ranks #2387, 2,068 places below that high. See the whole 1987 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From shein to Shaina
The story of Shaina
Yiddish naming produced a set of adjective-names — Shaina, Freida, Gittel, Bluma — used alongside Hebrew ones in Ashkenazi communities across Eastern Europe. Emigration brought them to America, where Shaina appears in the registers and rose sharply in the 1970s and 1980s among both Jewish and general American families, peaking in the mid-1980s.
Meaning
beautiful
From the Yiddish shein, 'beautiful', with a feminine ending — a cousin of the German schön. The phrase a shayne maidel, 'a beautiful girl', is ordinary Yiddish. The name is therefore transparent to speakers, which is unusual. A separate Hebrew Shaina meaning 'God is gracious' is sometimes claimed but is not the source.
How the name formed
- shein
- Shaina
Related forms: שיינא · Shayna · Sheina
Pronouncing Shaina
SHAY-nuh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Shaina, Shayna and Sheina are said identically.
Nicknames for Shaina
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1968
- Most girls named
- 1988770 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #319reached in 1987
- Change vs 2024
- −5.1%75 in 2025, from 79
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Shaina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- שיינא in Yiddish — transliteration
- Shayna in English — spelling variant
- Sheina in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, New Jersey, Florida.
Shainas among us
people named Shaina are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 21,430 born in 2025 was named Shaina
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Shaina
- #2387
- Shaina on the 2025 chart
- #813
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Shaina went to 75 girls in 2025, but Shayna is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 147, which makes it the 813th most-given girls’ name of the year — 1,574 places above the chart.
- Shaina75
- Shayna72
About 1 girl in 10,934 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 21,430 for Shaina itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The James test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Shaina's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: James climbed just as high around 1928, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and James's path sketches the road Shaina is walking now.
Shaina sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Shaina is headed
Shaina should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Shaina beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Shaina in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete and completely transparent to Yiddish speakers.
- It records a living naming tradition rather than a reconstructed one.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk in English.
- Several spellings of the sound are in use.
- The claimed Hebrew meaning is a later attachment rather than the source.
- It is closely dated to the 1980s in American records.
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What they receive
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Shaina
Feminine · #2387 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Shainas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,000 people named Shaina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Shaina?
- Shaina is the most-used spelling in US records — 75 of the 147 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Shayna.
- How popular is the name Shaina in 2025?
- Shaina ranks #2387 among US girl names in 2025, with 75 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Shaina?
- About 1 in every 21,430 US girls born in 2025 was named Shaina — 75 in all.
- Will my child share the name Shaina with classmates?
- Shaina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Shaina
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Maiya#2387 · Rena#2387 · Eviana#2387 · Dora#2387 · Shannon#2387 · Mariyah#2387 · Jeanette#2387 · Yana#2387
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Shaina? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Shaina and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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