Shaun
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Variant Of John From Sean.
- Origin
- Irish
About the Name Shaun
Shaun is an anglicized spelling of Seán, the Irish form of John, which traces through Latin Ioannes and Greek to the Hebrew Yochanan, meaning "God is gracious." The Irish Seán was one of the most common and beloved men's names in Gaelic tradition, and its many anglicized spellings — Sean, Shane, Shawn, and Shaun — reflect the challenges English speakers faced when rendering the sounds of Irish phonology in Roman script. The Shaun spelling in particular emphasizes an English phonetic reading, making the name's pronunciation immediately transparent to readers unfamiliar with Irish orthographic conventions.
Shaun first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1978, peaking in that same debut year at rank #52 — a pattern strongly suggesting a rapid surge of cultural popularity that brought the name to immediate mainstream attention. It accumulated over 31,000 top-1000 births across its chart run. The name last appeared in the top-1000 in 2017 at rank #891, a nearly four-decade span of use.
Shaun sits within a large family of John-derived names, combining deep biblical roots with a recognizably Irish-American identity. Its straightforward phonetic spelling makes it one of the more accessible variants in the Seán family. The recorded variant Shane represents a related but distinct anglicization with its own independent American character.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Shaun
US Popularity History (1978–2017)
Annual US births named Shaun by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1978 with 6,105 boys named Shaun (boy rank #52 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2017, ranked #891 for boys (242 US births). That's 839 places below its 1978 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Shaun Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Shaun the strongest states are Missouri, Florida, Massachusetts.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missouri | #737 | 31 |
| 2 | Florida | #747 | 56 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #768 | 22 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #781 | 43 |
| 5 | Louisiana | #800 | 19 |
| 6 | Michigan | #848 | 25 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #868 | 28 |
| 8 | Virginia | #875 | 29 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #950 | 35 |
| 10 | Illinois | #1,023 | 36 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #1,586 | 52 |
| 2 | California | #1,223 | 59 |
| 3 | New York | #1,030 | 77 |
| 4 | Illinois | #1,023 | 36 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #950 | 35 |
| 6 | Virginia | #875 | 29 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #868 | 28 |
| 8 | Michigan | #848 | 25 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #800 | 19 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #781 | 43 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Shaun in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shane | Variant Of Shaun From John. | Male | Irish |
Looking for names like Shaun?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Shaun to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Shaun against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).