Sharmaine
Feminine
Sharmaine is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,668 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Sharmaine is a respelling of Charmaine, and Charmaine has an unusually precise beginning: it was carried into general use by a film theme in 1926, a waltz written to accompany a silent picture and then played everywhere for years afterwards. Underneath the song is something older. Charmian is a genuine Greek name, and Shakespeare gave it to Cleopatra's attendant, which is where most English readers first met it.
How old is the name Sharmaine?
Sharmaine first appears in US birth records in 1949 — 76 years ago. The typical Sharmaine alive today was born around 1984, making them about 41 years old. About 1,600 people named Sharmaine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sharmaine most popular?
Sharmaine peaked in 1992, reaching #1844 nationally. See the whole 1992 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Charmian in Plutarch and in Shakespeare to Sharmaine
The story of Sharmaine
The song came first. A silent war film of the middle twenties was given a theme waltz called Charmaine, the kind of music written to be played live in the cinema, and the tune outlived the film by decades, recorded and re-recorded well into the nineteen fifties. Names carried by songs behave differently from names carried by films: the tune keeps being played long after the picture has gone, so the name gets a long tail rather than a single spike. Behind the song sits Charmian, an attendant of Cleopatra in Plutarch and then in Shakespeare, who has the last scene almost to herself and dies straightening her queen's crown. That is a real ancient name with a real ancient bearer, and whether the songwriters knew it or reached the same letters by accident is not recorded. The Sh- spelling appeared in America a generation after the song and follows the ordinary habit of writing the sound rather than the borrowed French letters.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The modern name cannot be traced with confidence to a single source. It is usually connected either to the older Greek name Charmian, from a word meaning delight or joy, or to a Latin word for a song, and neither connection can be demonstrated for the twentieth-century name. What can be demonstrated is the moment it became popular, which is a rarer and more useful kind of fact. The Sh- spelling is a later American variant and adds nothing to the question.
How the name formed
- Charmian in Plutarch and in Shakespeare
- A film theme waltz called Charmaine in the twenties
- Charmaine in general American use
- Sharmaine as the phonetic respelling
Pronouncing Sharmaine
shar-MAYN
Two syllables with the stress at the back. The ch of the original spelling and the sh of this one produce exactly the same sound, so the two versions are indistinguishable in speech and differ only in how much explaining they require on paper.
Nicknames for Sharmaine
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
- 1949
- Most girls named
- 199277 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1844reached in 1992
- Change vs 2010
- −58.3%5 in 2012, from 12
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.
Sharmaines among us
people named Sharmaine 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
Sharmaine 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 spelling tells you how to say it, which the ch- version does not.
- It has a datable and checkable origin, which is unusual for a name of its generation.
- The back stress gives it a lift that the shorter names of the same period lack.
- Charmaine is the spelling in the reference books, and this one will be treated as a variant of it forever.
- The spelling is on the register for boys as well as girls, though it reads female to almost everyone.
- It is closely tied to a particular mid-century sound, and it has not yet come back round.
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Sharmaine
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Sharmaines are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,600 people named Sharmaine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sharmaine in 2025?
- Sharmaine is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Sharmaine with classmates?
- Sharmaine 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 Sharmaine? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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