Sheba
Feminine · “Of Sheba”
The queen of Sheba appears in three scriptures and is named in none of them. The Hebrew text calls her only the queen of Sheba; the Quran does the same; and the names she is known by, Makeda in Ethiopia and Bilqis in the Arab tradition, were both supplied centuries later by people who felt the gap.
How old is the name Sheba?
Sheba first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Sheba alive today was born around 1977, making them about 48 years old. About 1,100 people named Sheba are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sheba most popular?
Sheba peaked in 1975, reaching #1544 nationally. See the whole 1975 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Saba to Sheba
The story of Sheba
The kingdom was real and its most famous work was a dam. The Marib dam was built across a wadi in the eighth century before Christ, funnelled the seasonal floods into an irrigation system that supported tens of thousands of people in a desert, and was maintained for well over a thousand years by successive states; when it finally failed in the sixth century of our era the collapse was remembered as a catastrophe and is mentioned in the Quran. The whole economy of southern Arabia rested on it. Everything else about the kingdom, including whether it ever had a queen, is much harder to establish, and the queen who made the name famous is a figure the sources decline to describe.
Meaning
Of Sheba
The name is a place: a kingdom in what is now Yemen, called Saba in Arabic and Sheba in Hebrew. It was rich on the incense trade and is mentioned in Assyrian records as well as biblical ones. As a personal name it identifies somebody with a country rather than describing them.
How the name formed
- Saba
- Sheba
Related forms: Saba · Sheva
Pronouncing Sheba
SHEE-buh
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The Arabic form of the place name begins with a plain s, and the sh is the Hebrew rendering; the two languages differ on that consonant in a good many shared words.
Nicknames for Sheba
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
- 1916
- Most girls named
- 197565 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1544reached in 1975
- Change vs 2022
- −36.4%7 in 2023, from 11
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.
Sheba in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Saba in Arabic — related form
- Sheva in Hebrew — transliteration
Shebas among us
people named Sheba 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
Sheba 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
- Short, clear and easy to say, with nothing silent or ambiguous in it.
- The place behind it is real, findable and genuinely interesting.
- It is unusual without containing any unfamiliar sound.
- It has been used as a name for dogs and cats in English for a long time, which children will know.
- The queen it evokes is a figure of legend rather than a documented person.
- It is strongly dated to the middle of the last century in American records.
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Sheba
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Shebas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Sheba are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sheba in 2025?
- Sheba is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Sheba with classmates?
- Sheba 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 Sheba? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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