girls:
198 births since 1951
#5518 (3rd percentile)
boys:
113 births since 1952
#4473 (2nd percentile)
overall:
311 births since 1951
#7428 (4th percentile)
The name Shell is the #7,428 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 311 recorded births since 1951. This represents the 4.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 4.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #5,518 (3.4% percentile) for all time with 198 births since 1951. For boys, it ranks #4,473 (2.4% percentile) for all time with 113 births since 1952.
Shell first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1951 (1951 for girls and 1952 for boys). Birth data for Shell is available in 24 out of the 36 years between 1951 and 1986 (23 years for girls and 13 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 Shell has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (63.7% of all recorded births). In 1986, 100.0% of babies named Shell were girls.
For girls, Shell reached its peak popularity in 1965, achieving the 1.5% percentile (ranked #746) with 9 births per million. The name was most common in 1965, with 9 births per million (ranked 1.5% percentile). There have been no recorded female births with this name since 1986.
For boys, Shell reached its peak popularity in 1963, achieving the 1.7% percentile (ranked #636) with 8 births per million. The name was most common in 1963, with 8 births per million (ranked 1.7% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 1971.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shell".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Shelle. View all variations of Shelle.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shell", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 6 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Shelle" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Shelle..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Shell. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 87.2% confident that Shell is pronounced as shehl, which has 1 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is sheel, at 12.8% 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 Shell? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shell. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shell, 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 EH1 L) 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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