girls:
12.2k births since 1950
#1421 (75th percentile)
boys:
8.3k births since 1954
#1290 (72nd percentile)
overall:
20.5k births since 1950
#1790 (77th percentile)
The name Shea is the #1,790 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 20,469 recorded births since 1950. This represents the 76.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 76.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #1,421 (75.1% percentile) for all time with 12,163 births since 1950. For boys, it ranks #1,290 (71.9% percentile) for all time with 8,306 births since 1954.
Shea first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1950 (1950 for girls and 1954 for boys). Birth data for Shea is available in 73 out of the 74 years between 1950 and 2023 (72 years for girls and 67 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 Shea has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (59.4% of all recorded births). In 2023, 63.1% of babies named Shea were girls.
For girls, Shea reached its peak popularity in 2005, achieving the 35.5% percentile (ranked #606) with 171 births per million. The name was most common in 2005, with 171 births per million (ranked 35.5% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2015, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Shea ranks #709 for girls (25.2% percentile) with 141 births per million, which is 82.0% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Shea reached its peak popularity in 1986, achieving the 34.9% percentile (ranked #459) with 146 births per million. The name was most common in 1986, with 146 births per million (ranked 34.9% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2016, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Shea ranks #772 for boys (15.3% percentile) with 79 births per million, which is 54.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shea".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Shea.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shea", 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 Shea.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Shea. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 80.0% confident that Shea is pronounced as shay, which has 1 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is shee, at 20.0% 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 Shea? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shea. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shea, 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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