An anglicized form of Irish Seán, Shawn also derived from the name John. The first name John has a Semitic origin and comes from the Hebrew names “Yôḥānān” or “Yəhôḥānān”, which mean “Yahweh has been gracious” or “Yahweh is merciful”.
Shawn is a male first name. In some cases it's also given to girls.
The name Shawn 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, Shawn ranks 355. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 5 were named Shawn. In the entire USA, approximately 333,078 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Shawn. That is 0.10 % of all living Americans.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Shawn reached its highest rank ever in the year 1973 at #26. In other words: 12,736 newborn boys were named Shawn 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, Shawn 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 Shawn will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Shawn was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Shawn ranked 528 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby boys a total of 532 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 Shawn will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Shawn. Because: There are men and boys named Shawn 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 Shawn 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 Montana, where Shawn ranks on position 64. The greatest chance of meeting Shawn, however, is in Vermont, where one in 267 boys and men bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 551 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 1,169 men and boys for their name before you once get Shawn 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 five letters, the name Shawn is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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 Shawn 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 Shawn, you can simply say:
Sun
Hat
Apple
Windmill
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Shawn
Shawn
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
S
H
A
W
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
W
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. Shawn sounds like this:
