Shirl
Masculine · “Bright clearing”
Shirl is given to both — 448 boys and 1,323 girls since 1880. See Shirl as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Shirl is Shirley with the ending cut off, which is an unusual direction for an English pet name to run: we normally clip the front and keep a soft ending. Shirl keeps the front and lands on a consonant, and that is exactly why it stayed usable for boys long after the full name had stopped being.
How old is the name Shirl?
Shirl first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Shirl alive today was born around 1938, making them about 87 years old. About 100 people named Shirl are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shirl most popular?
Shirl peaked in 1938, reaching #1439 nationally. See the whole 1938 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From scir leah to Shirl
The story of Shirl
Shirley was a man's name before it was a woman's, in the ordinary English way of moving a surname to the front. One of the villages behind it, Shirley in Surrey, produced something else as well: its vicar spent years selecting a wild poppy with a white edge from a corner of his own garden, breeding out the black center generation by generation, and the strain is still sold everywhere as the Shirley poppy. The given name went to girls in the twentieth century and went so completely that the male line closed behind it. The clipped form survived on both sides of that change, because a single closed syllable does not carry the soft ending that English hears as feminine, and a Shirl can be either.
Meaning
Bright clearing
Shirley is an English place name that became a surname before it became a given name, from Old English scir, bright or clear, and leah, a clearing in woodland. There are several villages of the name. As with every -ley name in English, the second element is the commonest word in the landscape vocabulary and the first is what does the distinguishing.
How the name formed
- scir leah
- Shirley
- Shirl
Pronouncing Shirl
SHURL
One syllable. Most American speakers use the same vowel they use in bird and word, with the r fully pronounced. English and Australian speakers drop the r and lengthen the vowel instead, which makes it sound like a different name.
Nicknames for Shirl
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
- 1915
- Most boys named
- 193822 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1439reached in 1938
- Change vs 1964
- −16.7%5 in 1966, 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.
Shirls among us
people named Shirl 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
Shirl 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
- One syllable, no silent letters, and nothing in it that can be spelled two ways once it has been heard.
- It works for a child of either sex, which very few names of its generation still manage.
- Short names age well: there is no pet form to grow out of and nothing to shorten later.
- The record holds this spelling for boys as well as girls, so nobody will read a child's sex off the name.
- It is heard as a clipping of Shirley whether or not Shirley is on the certificate, and Shirley is dated.
- A single stressed syllable ending in a liquid is hard to call across a playground, and it flattens easily into Sherl.
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What they receive
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Shirl
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Shirls are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 100 people named Shirl are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shirl in 2025?
- Shirl is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Shirl with classmates?
- Shirl will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
Steven#271 · Stephen#383 · Samuel#18 · Scott#534 · Sean#489 · Shawn#681 · Stanley#863 · Steve#1609
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Shirl? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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