girls:
485 births since 1974
#5231 (8th percentile)
boys:
583 births since 1987
#4003 (13th percentile)
overall:
1.1k births since 1974
#6671 (14th percentile)
The name Shadow is the #6,671 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 1,068 recorded births since 1974. This represents the 13.8% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 13.8% of all names). For boys, it ranks #4,003 (12.7% percentile) for all time with 583 births since 1987. For girls, it ranks #5,231 (8.5% percentile) for all time with 485 births since 1974.
Shadow first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1974 (1974 for girls and 1987 for boys). Birth data for Shadow is available in 43 out of the 50 years between 1974 and 2023 (41 years for girls and 37 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Shadow is truly gender-neutral, with nearly equal distribution between boys and girls. In 2023, 60.0% of babies named Shadow were boys. Interestingly, until around 1990, the name was more popular for girls (65.1% girls from 1974 to 1989), but since then it has been more commonly used for boys (57.3% boys from 1990 to 2023).
For boys, Shadow reached its peak popularity in 1993, achieving the 4.0% percentile (ranked #738) with 17 births per million. The name was most common in 1993, with 17 births per million (ranked 4.0% percentile). Despite a peak around 2017, the name has seen a recent rise in popularity for boys. Currently, Shadow ranks #904 for boys (0.8% percentile) with 7 births per million, which is 37.6% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Shadow reached its peak popularity in 1989, achieving the 2.5% percentile (ranked #804) with 11 births per million. The name was most common in 1994, with 12 births per million (ranked 2.3% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2012, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Shadow ranks #944 for girls (0.3% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 37.2% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shadow".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Shadow.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shadow", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Shadow.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Shadow. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Shadow is pronounced as SHA-doh, which has 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Shadow? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shadow. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shadow, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like SH AE1 D OW0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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