Shannon is the ‘possessor of wisdom’. This is the English form of the Irish name Sionainn. In the US, Shannon was quite popular during the 1970s.
Shannon is a female first name, but it has increasingly been given to boys for a number of years.
Shannon is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 1,139 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,138 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 339,764 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Shannon. That is 0.10 % of all living Americans.
Shannon is the ‘possessor of wisdom’. This is the English form of the Irish name Sionainn. In the US, Shannon was quite popular during the 1970s.
Sionainn is a goddess of Irish mythology... and the namesake of the River Shannon, the longest river in Ireland.
This was a real surprise! Shannon is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #10 in the year 1976, when 15,984 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter. This made Shannon much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Shannon was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Shannon ranked 1,333 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 149 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 Shannon will remain a universally popular name.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Shannon is one of them. However, Shannon is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Alaska seem to particularly fancy this name – the 884 women called Shannon who live here are 0,464% of all female residents and push their name up to #51, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Alaska.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter S is a very popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 9.3% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter A is more common for girls' names.
With seven letters, the name Shannon has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. 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.
That means that if 9.3% of all girls' names start with an S, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the girls' names that start with an S, Susan is the most common.
If your name is Shannon 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 Shannon, you can simply say:
Sun
Hat
Apple
Nut
Nut
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Shannon
Shannon
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
S
H
A
N
N
O
N
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.
S
H
A
N
N
O
N
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. Shannon sounds like this:
