How popular is the baby name Shawn in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Shawn.

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Popularity of the baby name Shawn


Posts that mention the name Shawn

Baby name predictions for 2017?

Beyonce album

The year is more than half over. Based on what we’ve seen in pop culture so far, which baby names do you expect to make significant gains on the charts in 2017?

Here are some possibilities…

  • Rumi and Sir (and maybe even “Sir Carter”) – the names of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s twins, born in mid-June. The names weren’t officially announced until mid-July via Instagram.
  • Bea and Shawn – the rumored names of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s twins. These were widely circulated before the real names were revealed.
  • Antiope and Gal – both associated with the movie Wonder Woman, released in June. The main character is played by Gal Gadot, and Antiope (WW’s aunt) is played by Robin Wright.
  • Callum – from the video game-based movie Assassin’s Creed, released in late 2016.
  • Jyn – from the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, released in late 2016 (hat tip: Screen Crush).
  • Zelle – from Zelle, the peer-to-peer payment app backed by dozens of U.S. banks that was announced/released in June.

Do you agree with these? Disagree? Which names would you add to this list?

Where did the baby name Shalawn come from in 1974?

Twins Shalawn and Seandra Williams (in the lap of their mother, Nancy)
Shalawn and Seandra Williams

The name Shalawn debuted very impressively in the U.S. baby name data in 1974. It was the top girl-name debut of the year, and is currently tied for 45th-highest girl name debut of all time.

Shalawn’s arrival is also linked to the reappearance of a somewhat similar name, Seandra, in the data:

Girls named ShalawnGirls named Seandra
197676
19752410
197470*†31†
1973..
1972..
*Debut, †Peak usage

So where did these two names come from?

A pair of identical twin girls!

Twins Shalawn and Seandra were born to O’Jays singer Walter Williams and his wife Nancy in early 1974. (This was about a year after the O’Jays song “Love Train” [vid] hit #1 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart.)

Both Billboard and Jet magazines mentioned the twins in April, soon after they were born.

Jet followed up in June with a photo of the twins sitting on their mother’s lap. The caption noted that their nicknames were “Lovie” and “Dovie,” and that they had an older sister named Dawn.

I don’t know how Walter and Nancy came up with the twins’ names, but they seem to be elaborated forms of the male names Shawn and Sean (which are essentially the same name, just spelled differently).

What are your thoughts on the names Shalawn and Seandra? Which one do you prefer?

P.S. Another member of the O’Jays, Eddie LeVert, is associated with the debut of the name Levert in 1987.

Sources:

Image: Clipping from Ebony magazine (6 Jun. 1974)

Maureen and Mavourneen: Too close for twin names?

Maureen O’Connor, former San Diego mayor (1986-1992), was charged with money laundering in federal court earlier this month.

I don’t know much about the situation, but I was intrigued to learn that Maureen had 12 siblings, including a twin sister with a very similar name — Mavourneen.

(The other siblings are Patrick, Michael, Dennis, Sharon, Dianne, Colleen, Sheila, Timothy, Karen, Thomas and Shawn.)

The names Maureen and Mavourneen (pronounced muh-VOOR-neen) are both Irish, but they have different etymologies:

Maureen is an anglicized form of Máirín, which is a pet form of Máire, which — like the English name Mary — is based on the French name Marie, which comes from the Latin name Maria. In ancient Rome, Maria was originally a feminine form of Marius, but it was later popularized as a version of the Hebrew name Miriam. The meaning of Miriam is unknown, though hypothesized definitions abound: “beloved,” “rebellious,” “strong sea,” “bitter sea,” “drop of the sea,” etc.

Mavourneen is an anglicized form of the Irish phrase mo mhúirnín, meaning “my darling.” It began as a term of endearment, but morphed into a given name probably when the song “Kathleen Mavourneen” (1837) became popular in the mid-1800s. (A number of the 19th-century Mavourneens I’ve tracked down were named “Kathleen Mavourneen.” Many of the 20th century Mavourneens too, actually.)

In terms of popularity, Maureen was one of the top 100 baby names in the U.S. from 1947 until 1954. Mavourneen, on the other hand, has never cracked the U.S. top 1,000.

And now the main question: What do you think of the names Maureen and Mavourneen for twins? Cute? Too close? Somewhere in between?

[Related post: How Similar Should Twin Names Be?]

Where did the baby name Irmalee come from in 1925?

The characters Shawn and Irmalee from the short story "Irmalee and the Mid-Victorian Age" (1925)
Shawn and Irmalee

In 1925, the name Irmalee popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the very first time. It was the top debut name for girls that year, in fact, with at least 37 baby girls getting the name:

  • 1927: 5 baby girls named Irmalee
  • 1926: 10 baby girls named Irmalee
  • 1925: 37 baby girls named Irmalee [debut]
  • 1924: unlisted
  • 1923: unlisted

What was the inspiration?

Signs point to the short story “Irmalee and the Mid-Victorian Age” by Oregon writer Vivien R. Bretherton. The story was printed in the July 1925 issue of McCall’s magazine, which had a circulation of well over 1,000,000 at that time.

The teaser for the story asked, “Which do our American men really prefer–the bold modern flapper, or the demure girl of yesteryear?”

Irmalee initially is represented as the archetypal flapper who brags: “[We] out-smoked and out-drank and out-danced and out-petted the rest of the world. We nabbed all the young chaps and we accumulated all the older ones. We didn’t even stay off the married women’s preserves.”

She proceeds to steal her divorced mother’s boyfriend, Shawn.

She accomplishes this by appearing to him as a Victorian vision in billowing flock and rose-draped hat. When he asks her “…do you go in for the new poetry? Or is it psycho-analysis?” she replies: “Tennyson.” Shawn is smitten, but Irmalee cannot sustain the masquerade, for she is “the jazz queen of her set.” She decides to show up for a dinner date as the scantily clad, cigarette-smoking “ultra-modern person” she believes herself to be. Rather than being disillusioned, as she anticipates, Shawn helps her to realize her true self, neither the passive Victorian ideal nor the sensation-seeking flapper, but the “very modern girl” who wants “all that the game” has given her but wants it honestly.

Nearly all of the 1925 Irmalees listed in Social Security Death Index (so far) were born in July or later. The rest, all born in June, probably just took a few weeks to be named.

(Waiting to choose a baby’s name was a lot more common a century ago. In 1915, one reporter joked that Wisconsin’s top baby name was “baby” because so many babies were not named at birth.)

The name Shawn doesn’t show up on the SSA’s baby name list until 1931, incidentally.

Sources:

  • Holliday, Heather. “Death of a Magazine Industry Icon.” AdAge 13 Mar. 2001.
  • Studlar, Gaylyn. “The Perils of Pleasure? Fan Magazine Discourse as Women’s Commodified Culture in the 1920s.” Silent Film. Ed. Richard Abel. London: The Athlone Press, 1996. 263-298.
  • SSA

Image: Clipping from McCall’s magazine (July 1925)