Sean is of Irish origin meaning “God is gracious.” It is a variant of the Hebrew name John and is likely inspired by the French version Jean.
Sean is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Sean isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Sean ranks 234. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 9 were named Sean. In total, there are currently 418,129 people – children, adults and seniors – named Sean living in the United States, which is approximately 0.12 % of the entire population.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Sean reached its highest rank ever in the year 1972 at #33. In other words: 9,513 newborn boys were named Sean that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Sean is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Sean will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Sean was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Sean ranked 385 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby boys a total of 797 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Sean will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Sean. Because: There are men and boys named Sean in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, just 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Sean is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular male first names, for example in Massachusetts, where Sean ranks on position 46. The greatest chance of meeting Sean, however, is in Alaska, where one in 198 boys and men bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 400 men and boys and in Mississippi, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 1,153 men and boys for their name before you once get Sean as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter S is a quite popular first letter for boys’ names. Because: 5.9% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters for boys’ names are J, A and D.
With four letters, the name Sean is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
This means that with 5.9% of all boys' names that begin with an S, this first letter is much more common than all 26 letters on average - and the most popular one of all the boys’ names starting with S is Steven.
If your name is Sean and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Sean, you can simply say:
Sun
Elephant
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Sean
Sean
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Sean sounds like this: