Shawna
Feminine · “God is gracious”
Shawna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 45,531 girls against 109 boys since 1880.
Shawna is Irish John, feminised in America. Seán is the Irish form of John; Shawn is Seán respelled for English readers; Shawna adds the Latin feminine ending that English uses for exactly this purpose.
How old is the name Shawna?
Shawna first appears in US birth records in 1941 — 84 years ago. The typical Shawna alive today was born around 1979, making them about 46 years old. About 43,500 people named Shawna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shawna most popular?
Shawna peaked in 1977, reaching #139 nationally. Today it ranks #10107, 9,968 places below that high. See the whole 1977 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Yohanan to Shawna
The story of Shawna
Norman French brought Jean to Ireland, where it became Seán. Irish emigration carried Seán to America, where English speakers respelled it phonetically as Shawn or Shaun. Then American families did what they do with any popular masculine name and built feminines on it: Shawna, Shauna, Shawnda, Seana. Shawna rose through the 1960s and peaked at the end of the 1970s.
Meaning
God is gracious
Through Seán, the Irish form of the French Jean and so of the Latin Johannes, from the Hebrew Yohanan — 'the Lord is gracious'. The -a ending carries no meaning of its own; it is the ordinary way English makes a feminine out of a masculine name.
How the name formed
- Yohanan
- Johannes
- Seán
- Shawn
- Shawna
Related forms: Seána · Shauna · Jeanne
Pronouncing Shawna
SHAW-nuh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Shawna and Shauna are said identically; the spelling is the only difference.
Nicknames for Shawna
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
- 1941
- Most girls named
- 19781,702 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #139reached in 1977
- Change vs 2023
- −59.1%9 in 2025, from 22
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.
Shawna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Seána in Irish — related form
- Shauna in English — spelling variant
- Jeanne in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Shawnas among us
people named Shawna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 178,585 born in 2025 was named Shawna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Marianne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Shawna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Marianne climbed just as high around 1957, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Marianne's path sketches the road Shawna is walking now.
Shawna 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
Shawna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Shawna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It sits inside the largest name family in Europe, reached by a genuinely Irish route.
- The spelling is fully phonetic for English readers, which Seán is not.
- Two soft syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- Shawna, Shauna and Seana are all in use, so the written form has to be given.
- It is closely dated to the 1970s and 1980s in American records.
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What they receive
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Shawna
Feminine · #10107 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Shawnas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 43,500 people named Shawna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shawna in 2025?
- Shawna ranks #10107 among US girl names in 2025, with 9 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Shawna?
- About 1 in every 178,585 US girls born in 2025 was named Shawna — 9 in all.
- Will my child share the name Shawna with classmates?
- Shawna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Shawna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Berta#10107 · Jettie#10107 · Maye#10107 · Osa#10107 · Fidelia#10107 · Alysa#10107 · Su#10107 · Willie#10107
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Shawna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Shawna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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