Shirley
Masculine · “bright clearing”
Shirley is given to girls far more often — 686,383 girls against 9,551 boys since 1880. See Shirley as a girl name
Shirley was a man's name until one novel changed it. A bright clearing in Old English, then a surname, then a boy's name — and then in 1849 a heroine was given it precisely because it was masculine, and it never went back.
How old is the name Shirley?
Shirley was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Shirley alive today was born around 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 2,100 people named Shirley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Shirley most popular?
Shirley peaked in 1935, reaching #259 nationally. See the whole 1935 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From scir + leah to Shirley
The story of Shirley
Shirley is a place name in several English counties and became a surname, then a given name for boys — which is exactly why Charlotte Brontë chose it for the title character of her 1849 novel: the heroine's parents had wanted a son and gave her the name anyway. Readers took the name for daughters instead, and within a century it was overwhelmingly feminine. Masculine use in America peaked around 1885.
Meaning
bright clearing
From the Old English scir, 'bright' or 'shire', and leah, 'clearing' or 'woodland glade'. The leah element is the commonest in English place names; scir gives both 'sheer' and 'shire', so the first element is read either as bright or as belonging to the county.
How the name formed
- scir + leah
- Shirley
Related forms: Shirlee · Sherley
Pronouncing Shirley
SHUR-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Said identically for either sex.
Nicknames for Shirley
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 1935435 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #259reached in 1935
- Change vs 1988
- +16.7%7 in 1993, 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.
Shirley in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Shirlee in English — spelling variant
- Sherley in English — spelling variant
Shirleys among us
people named Shirley 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
Shirley has already lived its whole cycle: it rose, had its era, and has stepped off the charts. The fashion question is behind it — what lies ahead is the waiting room where revivals begin, once a name's first generation has grown distant enough for it to sound fresh again.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete and easy to picture, and the place-name origin is well documented.
- It carries one of the clearest documented cases of a novel changing a name's sex.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- In modern English the name reads as unambiguously feminine.
- It is strongly period-coded to the nineteenth century in its masculine use.
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Shirley
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Shirleys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,100 people named Shirley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Shirley in 2025?
- Shirley is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Shirley with classmates?
- Shirley 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 Shirley? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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