girls:
419 births since 1973
#5297 (7th percentile)
boys:
51 births since 1994
#4535 (1st percentile)
overall:
470 births since 1973
#7269 (6th percentile)
The name Shy is the #7,269 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 470 recorded births since 1973. This represents the 6.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 6.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #5,297 (7.3% percentile) for all time with 419 births since 1973. For boys, it ranks #4,535 (1.0% percentile) for all time with 51 births since 1994.
Shy first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1973 (1973 for girls and 1994 for boys). Birth data for Shy is available in 39 out of the 51 years between 1973 and 2023 (38 years for girls and 9 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 Shy has been given predominantly to girls, with 89.1% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 57.1% of babies named Shy were girls.
For girls, Shy reached its peak popularity in 1997, achieving the 3.1% percentile (ranked #836) with 17 births per million. The name was most common in 1997, with 17 births per million (ranked 3.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2011, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Shy ranks #944 for girls (0.3% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 27.3% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Shy reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 0.4% percentile (ranked #920) with 5 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 5 births per million (ranked 0.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Shy ranks #910 for boys (0.1% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 68.2% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Shy".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Shai. View all variations of Shai.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Shy", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 3 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Shai" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Shai..
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Shy. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Shy is pronounced as shai, 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 Shy? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Shy. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Shy, 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