Sheril
Feminine
Sheril is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 704 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Sheril drops a letter from a name that has no etymology to begin with, and it is recorded for sons as well as daughters. The sound at the front of it is one of the places where English carries two words for one thing because two languages arrived.
How old is the name Sheril?
Sheril first appears in US birth records in 1935 — 90 years ago. The typical Sheril alive today was born around 1960, making them about 65 years old. About 600 people named Sheril are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sheril most popular?
Sheril peaked in 1956, reaching #1637 nationally. See the whole 1956 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Sheril
English has a shirt and a skirt and they are the same word. The Old English form produced shirt; the Norse form, brought by settlers whose speech had a hard k where English had gone soft, produced skirt; and because the two populations lived side by side for generations, both words stayed and divided the job between them. The pattern repeats across the vocabulary: ditch and dike, shriek and screech, whole and hale, shatter and scatter. Each pair is one ancestral word that arrived twice, and in almost every case the two halves drifted into slightly different meanings rather than one killing the other. It is the clearest surviving evidence of how completely the north and east of England were resettled, and it is sitting in an ordinary wardrobe.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The name this respells appeared in the twentieth century without a traceable source. Every explanation offered for it — a French endearment with an ending, a stone name with a different front — is a guess made afterwards. This spelling inherits the blank and adds nothing to it.
Pronouncing Sheril
SHER-il
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The second syllable is unstressed and can be written with an i, a y or an e without any change in sound, which is why this family has so many spellings.
Nicknames for Sheril
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
- 1935
- Most girls named
- 196447 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1637reached in 1956
- Change vs 1986
- +16.7%7 in 1994, from 6
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.
Sherils among us
people named Sheril 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
Sheril 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
- Two syllables with front stress is easy to say and hard to mangle.
- Sher detaches cleanly and works for a child of either sex.
- The spelling is shorter than the standard one and no harder to read.
- Cheryl, Sherryl and Sheryl are all recorded and will be written for it.
- The changed letters are inaudible, so the spelling must be given aloud every time.
- The name it respells has no known origin, so there is nothing to say about meaning.
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Sheril
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Sherils are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Sheril are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sheril in 2025?
- Sheril is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Sheril with classmates?
- Sheril 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 Sheril? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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