Sheila
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicised form of Sile, originally from Cecilia/Cecily/Celia
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃajlə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sheila is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 622(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 752
- IEIreland≈1 in 866
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #308 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 565 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 622 (inferred from the name graph)
202,159 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Sheyla in BR Brazil.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Anglicised form of Sile, originally from Cecilia/Cecily/Celia.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sheila counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #208 | 202,159 | 1 in 1.6K | 202K | Sheila | 565 |
| PH Philippines | #214 | ≈91,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Sheila | 145 |
| GB United Kingdom | #133 | ≈87,000 est. | ≈1 in 752 | 856 | Sheila | 278 |
| KE Kenya | #105 | ≈86,000 est. | ≈1 in 622 | — | Sheila | 71 |
| BR Brazil | — | 79,225 | 1 in 2.7K | 86K | Sheyla | 109 |
| CA Canada | #195 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 3 | Sheila | 253 |
| IE Ireland | #122 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 866 | — | Sheila | 108 |
202,159 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Sheila is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Irish/Scottish Gaelic; feminine form of Cecil; see Cecilia
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, A woman.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, She!
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In French, Forme anglo-saxonne de Cécilia/Cécile; origine latine, « aveugle ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Irlandais, forme de Cecilia; latin Caecilia, « aveugle ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Sheila Simb. 1922GBBritish actress (1922–2016)
- Sheila Hancockb. 1933GBBritish actress
- Sheila Fitzpatrickb. 1941AUAustralian and American historian
- Sheila Jackson Leeb. 1950USAmerican lawyer and politician (1950–2024)
- Sheila McCarthyb. 1956CACanadian actress
- Sheila E.b. 1957USAmerican singer and percussionist (born 1957)
- Sheila Kelleyb. 1961USAmerican actress
- Sheila Vandb. 1985USAmerican actress and performance artist
- Karen Gillanb. 1987GBnot in their usual nameScottish actress and filmmaker
- Sheila Atimb. 1991UGactress, singer, composer, and former model
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 102 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 202K | #272 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 86K | #521 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 79K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 79K | #389 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 300 | #389 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 163 | #272 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 146 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 65 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1989 | 8 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1993 | 5 | #497 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2021 | 1 | #2,272 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Sheila mean, and where does it come from?
- Anglicised form of Sile, originally from Cecilia/Cecily/Celia. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Sheila?
- In the etymology graph, Cecilia, Celia and Shelia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sheila?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃajlə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Sheila a male or female name?
- Sheila is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Sheila have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 202 thousand people named Sheila, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sheila.
- How common is the name Sheila?
- In the United States, the national register counted 202,159 people named Sheila in 2020, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Sheila compared with other names?
- In the United States, Sheila is the 208th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sheila?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sheilaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Sheila” — the 208th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.