Shane
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃeɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shane is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 58th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 492(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 627
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 806
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)
- #723 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 590 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 492 (inferred from the name graph)
167,539 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
(i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shane 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 | #313 | 167,539 | 1 in 2K | 165K | Shane | 590 |
| AU Australia | #113 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 627 | 104 | Shane | 316 |
| GB United Kingdom | #292 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 9 | Shane | 301 |
| ZA South Africa | #305 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Shane | 141 |
| CA Canada | #312 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 5 | Shane | 294 |
| IE Ireland | #58 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 492 | 71 | Shane | 187 |
| NZ New Zealand | #113 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 806 | 11 | Shane | 175 |
| GY Guyana | — | 603 | 1 in 1.2K | 603 | — | 12 |
167,539 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; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Shane 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, The Irish form of John; first attested John Fitz Desmond alias Shane Fitz John Desmond 1540 LP.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In Irish, Form of Sean; associated with Shane O'Neill, chief of Ulster.
as a nameIrish first names
of Sean', a form of John. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. O Seanaigh ‘descendant of Seanach’, a byname meaning ‘Old’, ‘Wise’. Vars. (of 1): McShane. (Of 2): O’Shanna, 0’Shann(e)y, O’Sheny; Shannagh, Shann(e)y, Sheeny. Dims, (of 2): O’Sheanaghaine, O’Shanahan, Shana(g)han, Shanghan, Shan(ih)an (Gael. 6 Seanachain); O’Shenane, O’Shennan, (O’)Shannon, (O’)Shanan (Gael. 6 Seanain).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Sean’, a form of John. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. 6 Seanaigh ‘descendant of Seanach’, a byname meaning ‘Old’, ‘Wise’.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
A form of Sean which is used in Ireland today. Shane O'Neill (died 1567) was the principal chief of Ulster in his day. Shannon (m, f) The name of the longest river in Ireland, which is listed by various authorities as a masculine and feminine name. It is occasionally used in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
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)
- Shane Rimmerb. 1929CACanadian actor (1929-2019)
- Shane Blackb. 1961USAmerican actor, screenwriter and film director
- Shane Warneb. 1969AUAustralian cricketer (1969–2022)
- Shane McMahonb. 1970USAmerican businessman and professional wrestler
- Shane Salernob. 1972USAmerican screenwriter
- Shane Westb. 1978USAmerican actor, musician and songwriter
- Shane Van Dykeb. 1979USAmerican actor
- Shane Smeltzb. 1981NZNew Zealand footballer
- Shane Dawsonb. 1988USAmerican Internet personality (born 1988)
- Shane Larkinb. 1992USTurkish-American basketball player (born 1992)
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 83 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 165K | #331 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.9K | #331 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 603 | #140 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 439 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1996 | 104 | #83 |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2018 | 71 | #92 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1997 | 45 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 34 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2018 | 11 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 9 | #212 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 7 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2015 | 6 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Shane mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Shane a male or female name?
- Shane is a male 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.
- What are other forms of the name Shane?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Shane have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 168 thousand people named Shane, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shane.
- How do you pronounce Shane?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃeɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Shane?
- In the United States, the national register counted 167,539 people named Shane in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Shane compared with other names?
- In the United States, Shane is the 313th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shane?
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/shaneThe 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, “Shane” — the 313th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.