Shane

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Shane is a given name, most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is the 94th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland1 in 378◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 523
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 827

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈166K ●

across 7 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
532 ●

1.9M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.2K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

ShaneLatin · English●2M records
ᲨანეGeorgian · Georgian●3 records

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

(i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Shane is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AU Australia#94221,620133K rec.—104Shane298
US United States#306164,6801.5M rec.1 in 2K165KShane532
GB United Kingdom#303102,92479K rec.—9Shane236
CA Canada#32240,40634K rec.—5Shane223
IE Ireland#4624,64210K rec.—71Shane174
PH Philippines#91522,44614K rec.——Shane130
IN India—12,9892.9K rec.—47Shane116
ZA South Africa#29711,10911K rec.——Shane130
NZ New Zealand#6210,3527.7K rec.—11Shane145
IT Italy#8136,3506.8K rec.——Shane64
DE Germany—5,4245.4K rec.——Shane119
EG Egypt—1,5431.6K rec.——Shane18

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English2M84%
  • Spanish88K4%
  • 48K2%
  • Hindi28K1%
  • French16K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English2,006,62484%
Spanish87,5384%
48,1462%
Hindi28,1111%
French15,7601%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Shane is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name136K records spelled Shane12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, France, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Shane', Shané, Shäne

  • Thai given name14K records spelled Shane8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Ireland

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written เชนท์, เชนท, Shan'E, เฌน, Chentee

  • Polish given name10K records spelled Shane26 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, United Kingdom, Czechia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Шэйн, Шане, Шэин, Schain, Chanay

  • Chinese given name8.6K records spelled Shane23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Myanmar (Burma)

    Languages: Chinese, Burmese

    Also written Shani, Shan-I, Sĥäñê, Shänê, Shanē

  • Albanian given name5.0K records spelled Shane4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Albania, United Kingdom

    Also written Shanë, Šhànë, Shânê

63 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Shane is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, The Irish form of John; first attested John Fitz Desmond alias Shane Fitz John Desmond 1540 LP.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In Irish, Form of Sean; associated with Shane O'Neill, chief of Ulster.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • of Sean', a form of John. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. O Seanaigh ‘descendant of Seanach’, a byname meaning ‘Old’, ‘Wise’. Vars. (of 1): McShane. (Of 2): O’Shanna, 0’Shann(e)y, O’Sheny; Shannagh, Shann(e)y, Sheeny. Dims, (of 2): O’Sheanaghaine, O’Shanahan, Shana(g)han, Shanghan, Shan(ih)an (Gael. 6 Seanachain); O’Shenane, O’Shennan, (O’)Shannon, (O’)Shanan (Gael. 6 Seanain).

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • Sean’, a form of John. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. 6 Seanaigh ‘descendant of Seanach’, a byname meaning ‘Old’, ‘Wise’.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • A form of Sean which is used in Ireland today. Shane O'Neill (died 1567) was the principal chief of Ulster in his day. Shannon (m, f) The name of the longest river in Ireland, which is listed by various authorities as a masculine and feminine name. It is occasionally used in Ireland.

    as a nameIrish first names

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.

Over time●

02K4K6K194019601980200020205.7K · 1973

Show as table
Shane in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1933–2025
Yearrecords
19336
19349
19358
19378
19395
19408
194117
194211
194316
194416
19459
194613
194720
194822
194927
195028
195138
195237
1953184
1954354
1955305
1956346
1957390
1958411
1959496
1960532
1961582
1962704
1963851
1964903
19651,025
19661,315
19671,967
19682,513
19693,531
19704,451
19715,093
19725,236
19735,710
19745,655
19755,209
19765,095
19774,868
19784,480
19794,482
19804,365
19813,710
19823,539
19833,404
19843,335
19854,549
19864,929
19875,305
19885,173
19894,860
19905,274
19915,106
19924,847
19934,438
19944,085
19953,630
19963,488
19973,317
19983,166
19993,247
20003,275
20013,116
20023,030
20032,816
20042,476
20052,459
20062,277
20072,241
20082,307
20092,132
20101,876
20111,643
20121,480
20131,398
20141,298
20151,217
20161,068
2017916
2018875
2019739
2020569
2021598
2022582
2023528
2024475
2025439

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 91 years between 1933–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Shane Rimmer, b. 1929Shane Black, b. 1961Shane Warne, b. 1969Shane McMahon, b. 1970Shane Salerno, b. 1972Shane West, b. 1978Shane Van Dyke, b. 1979Shane Smeltz, b. 1981Shane Dawson, b. 1988Shane Larkin, b. 1992

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●

Attested in 81 sources across 43 countries.

Official registers attesting Shane
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020165K#331
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020107.4K#4,796
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020007K#4,637
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020206.7K#5,101
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.9K#331
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—954#2,136
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025603#140
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025439—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—257#4,370
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—169#3,822
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—162#5,580
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—140#1,150

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 1,050 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Shane?
We estimate roughly 166 thousand people bear Shane (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Shane have the most bearers?
Shane is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled shane.
How common is Shane compared with other names?
In Australia, Shane is the 94th most common given name of 197,734 given names recorded there.
Is Shane a male or female name?
Shane 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 Shane mean?
Recorded meaning: (i) from Irish Gaelic O Seanaigh, ‘descendant of Seanach’, a personal name based on sean ‘old, wise’; (ii) a reduced form of McShane.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shane

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Shane” — the 94th most common given name in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Shane parses inside a full name →