Shantell
Feminine · “stony place”
Shantell is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,080 girls against 26 boys since 1880.
Chantal is not about singing. It looks as though it should be — chanter is French for to sing — but the name comes from a place in Provence whose name means stony ground, and it became a personal name because a saint took it from her husband's estate. Shantell anglicizes both the opening and the ending.
How old is the name Shantell?
Shantell first appears in US birth records in 1963 — 62 years ago. The typical Shantell alive today was born around 1986, making them about 39 years old. About 4,900 people named Shantell are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shantell most popular?
Shantell peaked in 1984, reaching #836 nationally. See the whole 1984 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Chantal to Shantell
The story of Shantell
Saints' names normally come from the saint; this one came from her address. Jeanne-Francoise Fremyot married the Baron de Chantal, was widowed young, founded the Visitation order with Francis de Sales, and was canonized in the nineteenth century — after which Chantal became a widely used French given name. It reached English-speaking countries in the twentieth century, and American respellings replaced the ch with sh, which is phonetically honest, and the -al with -ell, which follows the pattern of Michelle and Danielle.
Meaning
stony place
Chantal is a place name in the Saone-et-Loire, generally read from an Occitan word for a stone or a boulder-strewn field. Jeanne de Chantal, a seventeenth-century French noblewoman who founded a religious order and was canonized, took her name from the estate, and the name spread from her. The singing connection is a folk etymology that almost everyone makes and that the place name does not support.
How the name formed
- Chantal
- Shantell
Related forms: Chantal · Chantelle
Pronouncing Shantell
shahn-TELL
shahn-TELL, two syllables, stress at the back. French says Chantal as shahn-TAL, with the ending short — so the -ell spelling has changed the vowel as well as the letters, and this is genuinely a different ending rather than a respelling of the same one.
Nicknames for Shantell
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
- 1963
- Most girls named
- 1987196 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #836reached in 1984
- Change vs 2020
- +28.6%9 in 2021, from 7
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.
Shantell in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Chantal in French — same name
- Chantelle in French — related form
Shantells among us
people named Shantell 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
Shantell 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
- There is a documented French saint and a real place behind it.
- The sh makes the opening unambiguous for English readers.
- The stress at the end balances well against a front-stressed surname.
- Chantelle, Shantel and Shantell are all in use, so the spelling is dictated every time.
- The singing connection is what almost everyone assumes and it is not the origin.
- It is closely tied to one American generation and dates a person fairly precisely.
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What they receive
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Shantell
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Shantells are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,900 people named Shantell are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shantell in 2025?
- Shantell is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Shantell with classmates?
- Shantell 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 Shantell? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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