girls:
1.7k births since 1968
#4072 (29th percentile)
boys:
2k births since 1971
#2775 (39th percentile)
overall:
3.7k births since 1968
#4492 (42nd percentile)
The name Shai is the #4,492 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 3,739 recorded births since 1968. This represents the 41.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 41.9% of all names). For boys, it ranks #2,775 (39.5% percentile) for all time with 2,048 births since 1971. For girls, it ranks #4,072 (28.7% percentile) for all time with 1,691 births since 1968.
Shai first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1968 (1968 for girls and 1971 for boys).
The name Shai is truly gender-neutral, with nearly equal distribution between boys and girls. In 2023, 65.4% of babies named Shai were boys. Interestingly, until around 1983, the name was more popular for girls (64.4% girls from 1968 to 1982), but since then it has been more commonly used for boys (55.6% boys from 1983 to 2023).
For boys, Shai reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 23.4% percentile (ranked #698) with 120 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 120 births per million (ranked 23.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Shai is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #698 (23.4% percentile) with 120 births per million.
For girls, Shai reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 11.7% percentile (ranked #836) with 66 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 66 births per million (ranked 11.7% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Shai is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #836 (11.7% percentile) with 66 births per million.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shai".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Shai.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shai", 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 Shai.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Shai. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 89.7% confident that Shai is pronounced as shai, which has 1 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is shay, at 10.3% confidence, with 1 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 Shai? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shai. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shai, 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 AY1) 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.
© 2025 NamePlay.org
Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker