Shawna
- Pronunciation
- [Shaw-na]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Shaun.
- Origin
- Celtic
About the Name Shawna
Shawna is a feminine form of Shaun, the anglicized spelling of the Irish Seán, itself the Gaelic form of John, meaning "God is gracious." Reshaped with a feminine -a ending, Shawna carries that gracious heritage into a soft, friendly girls' name, with a phonetic spelling that makes the Irish sound easy and approachable in English. It is a warm, familiar name with a thread of old religious meaning running quietly beneath it.
The name belongs to a generation of warm, casual feminine names built from sturdy traditional roots, and it sits within a notably large family of related spellings. That breadth allowed parents to tailor the look on paper while keeping the same gentle, familiar sound, and Shawna in particular reads as approachable and down-to-earth. It has the easy, conversational quality of a name made to be called across a room and answered with a smile.
As a girls' name, Shawna entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, the same year it reached its peak at #692, and it remained in the rankings only through 2003, when it sat at #942. Over its short tracked span it accounted for 1,154 births among the top-1000. Recorded variants include Sean, Seana, Seanna, Shanna, Shaun, Shauna, Shawnette, and Shawntel.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Shawna
US Popularity History (2000–2003)
Annual US births named Shawna by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 341 girls named Shawna (girl rank #692 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2003, ranked #942 for girls (250 US births). That's 250 places below its 2000 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 Shawna Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 1999–2008 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Shawna the strongest states are Wisconsin, Arkansas, Oklahoma.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wisconsin | #471 | 42 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #538 | 16 |
| 3 | Oklahoma | #566 | 30 |
| 4 | Kansas | #570 | 16 |
| 5 | Kentucky | #578 | 49 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #622 | 93 |
| 7 | Maryland | #641 | 37 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #642 | 33 |
| 9 | Ohio | #646 | 105 |
| 10 | Michigan | #682 | 62 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Carolina | #882 | 25 |
| 2 | Arizona | #831 | 23 |
| 3 | Missouri | #765 | 33 |
| 4 | Minnesota | #760 | 23 |
| 5 | Florida | #738 | 69 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #721 | 50 |
| 7 | Indiana | #700 | 51 |
| 8 | Michigan | #682 | 62 |
| 9 | Ohio | #646 | 105 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #642 | 33 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 1999–2008. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Shawna in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sean | Gift From God. Form Of John From The French Jean. | Male | Irish |
| Seana | Gift From God | Female | Gaelic |
| Seanna | Gods Generosity. | Female | Hebrew |
| Shanna | Female | Irish | |
| Shaun | Variant Of John From Sean. | Male | Irish |
| Shauna | Present | Female | Irish |
| Shawnette | Beautiful Intellgent Flower. | Female | American |
| Shawntel | Singer | Female | French |
Looking for names like Shawna?
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 Shawna to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Shawna against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).