Shawn
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ,92 Anglicized spelling of Irish Gaelic Sean, used mainly in North America
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Shawn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 993(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1K
- USUnited States1 in 1.2K
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)
- #416 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 624 (measured from records)
- 1 in 533 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
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)
,92 Anglicized spelling of Irish Gaelic Sean, used mainly in North America. In Canada it is also found as a girl’s name.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shawn 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 | — | ≈1,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Shawn | 78 |
| US United States | #161 | 279,685 | 1 in 1.2K | 253K | Shawn | 624 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #485 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Shawn | 10 |
| GB United Kingdom | #310 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 3 | Shawn | 236 |
| CA Canada | #170 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 993 | 5 | Shawn | 296 |
| SG Singapore | #104 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Shawn | 128 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1,408 | 1 in 533 | 1.4K | — | 11 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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)
Shawn is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Variant of Sean.
as a nameIrish first names
Anglicized spelling of SEÁN , found mainly in America.
as a word
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)
- Shawn Weatherlyb. 1959USAmerican beauty queen, actress (active 1980–)
- Shawn Michaelsb. 1965USAmerican professional wrestler
- Shawn Levyb. 1968USCanadian fimmaker (born 1968)
- Jay Zb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur
- Shawn Wayansb. 1971USAmerican actor, DJ, producer, writer and comedian
- Shawn Bradleyb. 1972DEAmerican basketball player
- Shawn Hatosyb. 1975USAmerican actor
- Shawn Ashmoreb. 1979CACanadian actor
- Shawn Pyfromb. 1986USAmerican actor
- Shawn Mendesb. 1998CACanadian singer
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 70 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 253K | #191 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 27K | #191 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1.4K | #25 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 399 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 46 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 13 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #795 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2013 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 3 | #727 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1993 | 3 | #623 |
Reference works 3
- 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 are other forms of the name Shawn?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Where does the name Shawn come from?
- ,92 Anglicized spelling of Irish Gaelic Sean, used mainly in North America. In Canada it is also found as a girl’s name. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Shawn a male or female name?
- Shawn 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 does the name Shawn mean?
- Recorded meaning: ,92 Anglicized spelling of Irish Gaelic Sean, used mainly in North America.
- In which country does Shawn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 million people named Shawn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shawn.
- Where is Shawn most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shawn is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 533 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Shawn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 279,685 people named Shawn in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Shawn compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Shawn is the 104th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shawn?
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/shawnThe 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, “Shawn” — the 104th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.