Shawnee
Feminine · “southerner”
Shawnee is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,909 girls against 120 boys since 1880.
Shawnee is the name of a nation. The Shawnee are an Algonquian people whose towns once stood across the Ohio Valley, and their name in their own language says where they were: the southerners. It is also, now, the name of a great many American towns, counties, streets and rivers.
How old is the name Shawnee?
Shawnee first appears in US birth records in 1943 — 82 years ago. The typical Shawnee alive today was born around 1989, making them about 36 years old. About 3,700 people named Shawnee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shawnee most popular?
Shawnee peaked in 1992, reaching #865 nationally. See the whole 1992 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Shaawanwaki to Shawnee
The story of Shawnee
The Shawnee were among the most widely traveled of the eastern nations, with towns at various times in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Alabama, and their leaders are among the best documented of the period, Tecumseh above all. Removal in the nineteenth century scattered them to Kansas and then Oklahoma, where three federally recognized Shawnee nations are based today. As the people were pushed west their name stayed behind on the land: Shawnee is a city in Oklahoma and one in Kansas, a county, a national forest, a mountain and a river. Most Americans meet the word as a place name first, which is how it came to be given as a personal name in the twentieth century.
Meaning
southerner
From the Algonquian element shawan, south. The people's own name for themselves, Shaawanwaki, carries the same root, and the English spelling is an approximation of it.
How the name formed
- Shaawanwaki
- Shawnee
Related forms: Shaawanwaki
Pronouncing Shawnee
shaw-NEE
Two syllables with the weight at the back. Front-weighted SHAW-nee is also common in American speech, particularly where the place names are.
Nicknames for Shawnee
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
- 1943
- Most girls named
- 1992228 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #865reached in 1992
- Change vs 2022
- −22.2%7 in 2024, from 9
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.
Shawnee in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Shaawanwaki in Shawnee — related form
Shawnees among us
people named Shawnee 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
Shawnee 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
- It is spelled as it sounds and is familiar to most Americans from the map.
- The meaning is documented in the language it comes from rather than reconstructed.
- It carries short forms that are themselves standing names.
- It is a living nation's name, and Shawnee people are here to have an opinion about it being used as a given name.
- The spelling is recorded for boys as well as girls in the United States.
- It is heard as Shawna and Shauna constantly, and corrected often.
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Shawnee
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Shawnees are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,700 people named Shawnee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shawnee in 2025?
- Shawnee is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Shawnee with classmates?
- Shawnee 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 Shawnee? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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