girls:
7.8k births since 1953
#1839 (68th percentile)
boys:
4.8k births since 1932
#1721 (62nd percentile)
overall:
12.7k births since 1932
#2337 (70th percentile)
The name Shay is the #2,337 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 12,681 recorded births since 1932. This represents the 69.8% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 69.8% of all names). For girls, it ranks #1,839 (67.8% percentile) for all time with 7,833 births since 1953. For boys, it ranks #1,721 (62.5% percentile) for all time with 4,848 births since 1932.
Shay first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1932 (1932 for boys and 1953 for girls). Birth data for Shay is available in 72 out of the 92 years between 1932 and 2023 (71 years for girls and 68 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 Shay has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (61.8% of all recorded births). In 2023, 74.1% of babies named Shay were girls. Interestingly, until around 1953, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1932 to 1952), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (61.8% girls from 1953 to 2023).
For girls, Shay reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 30.7% percentile (ranked #649) with 167 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 168 births per million (ranked 30.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2013, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Shay ranks #701 for girls (26.0% percentile) with 146 births per million, which is 86.8% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Shay reached its peak popularity in 1991, achieving the 19.4% percentile (ranked #613) with 73 births per million. The name was most common in 1991, with 73 births per million (ranked 19.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2015, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Shay ranks #827 for boys (9.2% percentile) with 49 births per million, which is 66.9% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shay".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Shea. View all variations of Shea.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shay", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 14 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Shea" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Shea..
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Shay. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Shay is pronounced as shay, which has 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 Shay? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shay. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shay, 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 EY1) 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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