Shelagh
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Variant of Sheila. The final consonants in the written form seem to have been added to give a Gaelic feel to the name
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃɛlə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shelagh is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ISIceland1 in 351K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.4M
- GYGuyana1 in 188Kas Shela
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Shelagh itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 27 (measured from records)
- 1 in 351K (inferred from the name graph)
1,769 named Shela, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iceland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Shela in US United States.
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)
- EnglishSheila(inferred from the name graph)via Sheila
- IrishSíle(inferred from the name graph)via Sheila
- LatinCecilia(inferred from the name graph)via Sheila
Steps marked ◐ come from the entry for the form named above them, not from this name's own sources.
Variant of Sheila. The final consonants in the written form seem to have been added to give a Gaelic feel to the name. There is no etymological justification for them. Variant: Sheelagh.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shelagh 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 | 1,769as Shela | 1 in 188K | 1.8K | Shela | 9 |
| BR Brazil | 109as Shela | 1 in 1.9M | 188 | — | — |
| AL Albania | 13as Shela | 1 in 237K | 13 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 12 | 1 in 1.4M | 12 | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | 8as Shela | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 7as Shela | 1 in 838K | 7 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 4as Shela | 1 in 188K | 4 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
1,769 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Shelagh is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Another Anglicized form of SÍLE (see also SHEILA ). The final consonants in the written form seem to have been added to restore a Gaelic feel to the name, since they occur at the end of many Gaelic words and are silent. However, they do not have any historically justified place in the name. Variant: Sheelagh .
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)
- Shelagh Fraserb. 1920GBBritish actress (1920-2000)
- Shelagh Robertsb. 1924GBBritish politician (1924-1992)
- Shelagh Delaneyb. 1938GBEnglish dramatist and screenwriter (1938–2011)
- Shelagh McDonaldb. 1948GBBritish musician
- Shelagh Keeleyb. 1954CACanadian artist (born 1954)
- Shelagh Stephensonb. 1955GBBritish writer
- Shelagh Alexanderb. 1959CACanadian, born 1959; artist (1959–2018)
- Shelagh McLeodb. 1960CACanadian actress
- Shelagh Donohoeb. 1965USAmerican rower
- Shelagh CampbellCAresearcher
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 20 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 750 | #15,335 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1961 | 22 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1950 | 22 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1969 | 20 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1964 | 20 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1963 | 20 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1962 | 20 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1968 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1967 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1957 | 17 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1965 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1952 | 16 | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- Where does the name Shelagh come from?
- Variant of Sheila. The final consonants in the written form seem to have been added to give a Gaelic feel to the name. There is no etymological justification for them. Variant: Sheelagh. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Shelagh?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃɛlə/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Shelagh?
- In the etymology graph, Cecilia, Sheila and Shelia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Shelagh mean?
- Recorded meaning: Variant of Sheila. The final consonants in the written form seem to have been added to give a Gaelic feel to the name.
- Is Shelagh a male or female name?
- Shelagh 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 Shelagh have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.8 thousand people named Shela, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Shelagh most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shelagh is densest in Iceland — about 1 in 351 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Shelagh?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 12 people named Shelagh, about 1 in 1.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Shelagh?
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/shelaghThe 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, “Shelagh”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.