Shirl
1,323 US births on record
Where Shirl stands
1,323US births · 1934–2025
Shirl has been registered 1,323 times in the United States since 1934. It did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so the SSA published no figure for it that year.
Its moment was 1964, when 210 babies were given it. In 7 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How Shirl's figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
- A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Shirl was under the floor in 7 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000 reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
Shirl in the United States
Between 1973 and 1983 the name has been falling — down 74% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Shirl in New Zealand
Shirl never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Shirl in England & Wales
Shirl does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1940 | below floor | <5 |
| 1950 | #1,955 | 24 |
| 1960 | #1,655 | 46 |
| 1970 | #3,311 | 19 |
| 1980 | #7,418 | 8 |
| 1990 | below floor | <5 |
| 2000 | below floor | <5 |
| 2010 | below floor | <5 |
| 2020 | below floor | <5 |
<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.
Where in the United States
The states that registered Shirl most often since 1934. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 82 |
| Texas | 53 |
| Maryland | 49 |
| Virginia | 44 |
| California | 40 |
| New York | 30 |
| North Carolina | 25 |
| Illinois | 21 |
| Michigan | 15 |
| Missouri | 14 |
Questions about Shirl
How popular is the name Shirl?
Shirl did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so no figure was published for it that year. Its best US rank was #714 in 1964.
When was Shirl most popular?
Shirl peaked in 1964, when 210 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Shirl rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all girls' births, Shirl has been falling between 1973 and 1983 (-74%).
Names that had their moment when Shirl did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1964, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026
