Shiela
Feminine · “blind”
Shiela has its i and e transposed from Sheila, and Sheila is the Irish form of Cecilia — which descends from a Roman family name meaning blind. That is a startling thing to find at the end of a name that sounds as soft as this one, and it is entirely documented.
How old is the name Shiela?
Shiela first appears in US birth records in 1908 — 117 years ago. The typical Shiela alive today was born around 1963, making them about 62 years old. About 3,700 people named Shiela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shiela most popular?
Shiela peaked in 1970, reaching #712 nationally. See the whole 1970 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Caecilia to Shiela
The story of Shiela
Cecilia became a major Christian name through a Roman martyr who is the patron of music — an attribution that seems to rest on a misreading of her legend, in which she sang to God in her heart during her wedding. Ireland took the name as Sile and it became one of the standard Irish women's names; English spelled it Sheila and Sheelagh, and by the twentieth century it was so associated with Ireland that Australian English used sheila as a general word for a woman. The transposed vowels here are the ordinary drift of a name known by ear.
Meaning
blind
The Roman gens name Caecilius comes from caecus, blind, and it is one of a set of Roman family names taken from physical descriptions — Cicero from a chickpea, Naso from a nose. Cecilia is the feminine. Irish took it as Sile, and English wrote that as Sheila. The derivation is standard. Roman family names stopped describing anyone within a generation of being fixed, so the blindness belongs to an ancestor two thousand years ago.
How the name formed
- Caecilia
- Cecilia
- Síle
- Shiela
Related forms: Síle · Cecilia · Cecilia
Pronouncing Shiela
SHEE-luh
SHEE-luh, two syllables, stress at the front. Sheila and Shiela are said identically; the transposed vowels are in a position where English reads either order the same way, which is why the drift survives.
Nicknames for Shiela
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
- 1908
- Most girls named
- 1970216 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #712reached in 1970
- Change vs 1999
- +33.3%8 in 2001, 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.
Shiela in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Síle in Irish — same name
- Cecilia in Italian — related form
- Cecilia in Spanish — related form
Shielas among us
people named Shiela 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
Shiela 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 Roman family behind it is documented and the etymology is genuinely surprising.
- The Irish form Sile is available as a more accurate alternative.
- Two syllables, easy in any accent, and comfortable against most surnames.
- Sheila is the standard spelling and the transposition reads as a slip rather than a variant.
- In Australian English the name is also a general word for a woman, which travelers discover.
- It is strongly associated with the middle of the last century and dates a person fairly closely.
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Shiela
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Shielas 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 Shiela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shiela in 2025?
- Shiela is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Shiela with classmates?
- Shiela will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Shiela? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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