Shirley
given name · Latin script
Meaning: English, originally a surname meaning ‘shire meadow’; later popularized as a girls’ name by Charlotte Brontë and Shirley Temple
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Shirley is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 33rd most common given name.
- CNChina≈1 in 437(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 485
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 590
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #260 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 560 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 437 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,200,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shïrlëy in EC Ecuador.
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)
English, originally a surname meaning ‘shire meadow’; later popularized as a girls’ name by Charlotte Brontë and Shirley Temple.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shirley 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 437 | — | Shirley | 80 |
| US United States | #114 | 360,153 | 1 in 924 | 359K | Shirley | 560 |
| GB United Kingdom | #124 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 590 | 32 | Shirley | 251 |
| PH Philippines | #199 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Shirley | 136 |
| IT Italy | #223 | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 985 | 1 | Shirley | 59 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 29,001 | 1 in 583 | 29K | Shïrlëy | 42 |
| SG Singapore | #33 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 485 | — | Shirley | 120 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 8,232 | 1 in 619 | 8.2K | — | 6 |
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); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Shirley 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, from Shirley (Derby, Hampshire, Surrey, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire); first attested William de Schirle 1219 AssY
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; bright meadow; originally a boy's name
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
English, ‘shire meadow’. Originally this was a surname and masculine first name particularly associated with Yorkshire. It was probably first used as a girls’ name by Charlotte Bronté in her novel Shirley (1849). This and more recently, presumably, the fame of the film actress Shirley Temple, spread the name widely.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, places, for example in Derbys., Hants, Surrey, and the W
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, places, for example in Derbys., Hants, Surrey, and the
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)
- Shirley Boothb. 1898USAmerican actress (1898–1992)
- Shirley Jacksonb. 1916USAmerican writer (1916-1965)
- Jean Hagenb. 1923USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1923–1977)
- Shirley Templeb. 1928USAmerican actress and diplomat (1928–2014)
- Shirley Jonesb. 1934USAmerican singer and actress
- Shirley MacLaineb. 1934USAmerican actress
- Shirley Knightb. 1936USAmerican actress (1936-2020)
- Shirley Basseyb. 1937GBWelsh singer
- Shirley Eatonb. 1937GBBritish actress
- Shirley Hendersonb. 1965GBBritish actress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 104 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 359K | #138 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 29K | #65 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 8.2K | #80 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #138 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 133 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 90 | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Shirley mean, and where does it come from?
- English, originally a surname meaning ‘shire meadow’; later popularized as a girls’ name by Charlotte Brontë and Shirley Temple. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Shirley a male or female name?
- Shirley 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.
- What are other forms of the name Shirley?
- In the etymology graph, Shirlee and Sherley are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Shirley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 million people named Shirley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shirley.
- How common is the name Shirley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 360,153 people named Shirley in 2020, about 1 in 924 residents.
- How common is Shirley compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Shirley is the 33rd most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shirley?
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/shirleyThe 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, “Shirley” — the 33rd most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.