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Shirley in the US

  1. #71 Debra
  2. #72 Julie
  3. #73 Christine
  4. #74 Kelly
  5. #75 Shirley
  6. #76 Dennis
  7. #77 Janet
  8. #78 Gregory
  9. #79 Jerry
HOME DISCOVER ABOUT
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of the various places (in the West Midlands, Derbyshire, Hampshire, and Surrey) named in Old English from scīr ‘county, shire’ or scīr ‘bright’ + lēah ‘wood, clearing’. It was given by Charlotte Brontë to the heroine of her novel Shirley (1849). According to the novel, her parents had selected the name in prospect of a male child and used it regardless. Shirley had earlier been used as a boy's name (Charlotte Brontë refers to it as a ‘masculine cognomen’), but this literary influence fixed it firmly as a girl's name. It was strongly reinforced during the 1930s and 40s by the popularity of the child film star Shirley Temple (b. 1928).
75th in the U.S. for 2011

Nicknames & variations

Quick facts

Hundreds of thousands
of people in the U.S have this name
582,505
to be exact (as of February 2011)
685,367
if you include dead people (since the government started keeping track)
Mississippi
has the most people named Shirley per capita
1935
marked the height of its popularity
99.41%
0.59%
84%
55+
14%
30-54
1%
13-29
0.76%
0-12

Top state populations

U.S. Distribution Map

Shirley is most likely to live in California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio

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