Shannah
Feminine
Shannah has three possible sources and the added h decides nothing. It can be an Irish name from a river, a Hebrew word meaning a year, or an American coinage on a productive front, and the silent letter at the end belongs to a respelling habit rather than to any of them. The Hebrew word is the one worth knowing about.
How old is the name Shannah?
Shannah first appears in US birth records in 1945 — 80 years ago. The typical Shannah alive today was born around 1985, making them about 40 years old. About 1,300 people named Shannah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shannah most popular?
Shannah peaked in 1978, reaching #1915 nationally. See the whole 1978 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From An Irish river name, a Hebrew word and an American coinage to Shannah
Our story of Shannah
The Hebrew word for a year opens one of the most-used greetings in the language. The new year wish is built on it, and the same root produces words about repetition and about change, which is a good root for a year to sit in: a year is both the thing that repeats and the thing that makes everything different. The word is not ordinarily a personal name in Hebrew, though names built on it exist. Whether any American family had it in mind when they wrote this spelling is undocumented and probably rare; what the h more likely records is the general American habit of ending a woman's name with a silent letter borrowed from biblical transliteration, applied here to a name that may have nothing biblical about it.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Three candidates with unrelated meanings. The Irish route gives a river name of disputed derivation; the Hebrew word means a year; an American coinage gives nothing. The final h looks like the Hebrew transliteration convention, which may be deliberate or may be the ordinary American respelling device, and there is no way to tell.
How the name formed
- An Irish river name, a Hebrew word and an American coinage
- All three producing similar English spellings
- A silent h added by American convention
- Shannah in the registers from the mid-century
Pronouncing Shannah
SHAN-uh
Two syllables, stress on the first, with a short flat a. The final h is completely silent, and Shanna, Shana and Shannah are identical in speech.
Nicknames for Shannah
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
- 1945
- Most girls named
- 197851 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1915reached in 1978
- Change vs 2013
- −12.5%7 in 2014, from 8
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.
Shannahs among us
people named Shannah are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Shannah sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The sound is transparent and needs no coaching from anyone.
- Shan is available immediately and is entirely unremarkable.
- It is genuinely uncommon while sounding completely familiar.
- Three spellings of this sound are in circulation and none is standard.
- There is no meaning to give, because three sources give three answers.
- The silent h is a lifetime of spelling out on the telephone.
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Shannah
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Shannahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Shannah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shannah in 2025?
- Shannah is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Shannah with classmates?
- Shannah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
Susan#1085 · Sarah#90 · Sandra#1207 · Stephanie#557 · Sharon#1250 · Shirley#1581 · Samantha#151 · Sophia#5
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Shannah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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