Is Shelby a male or female name?
Shelby is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 90%, based on 177,071 observations.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- female
- Probability
- 90%
- Sample size
- 177,071
- Confidence
- high
Shelby by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States US | female | 90% | 164,738 | ssa |
| Canada CA | female | 96% | 7,639 | statcan |
| England and Wales GB | female | 97% | 3,701 | ons |
| France FR | female | 97% | 855 | insee |
| Ireland IE | female | 100% | 63 | cso |
| Switzerland CH | female | 88% | 52 | bfs |
| Poland PL | female | 100% | 15 | pesel |
| Austria AT | female | 100% | 8 | statat |
Attested in 12 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AT · AU · BE · CA · CH · FR · GB · IE · IN · PL · SE · US
Shelby over time
In the United States, 0% of the babies named Shelby in the 1880s were girls, against 92% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born. In France, 100% of the babies named Shelby in the 2000s were girls, against 93.4% in the 2020s.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies | France: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 0% | 115 | — | |
| 1890s | 0% | 144 | — | |
| 1900s | 0% | 193 | — | |
| 1910s | 6% | 838 | — | |
| 1920s | 7% | 1,320 | — | |
| 1930s | 80% | 7,545 | — | |
| 1940s | 75% | 6,537 | — | |
| 1950s | 69% | 4,457 | — | |
| 1960s | 70% | 4,643 | — | |
| 1970s | 77% | 7,716 | — | |
| 1980s | 83% | 9,491 | — | |
| 1990s | 96% | 75,263 | — | |
| 2000s | 97% | 32,134 | 100% | 155 |
| 2010s | 97% | 11,570 | 100% | 305 |
| 2020s | 92% | 2,772 | 93% | 380 |
Births per decade from the US Social Security Administration (1880–2024) and INSEE (France, 1900–2025); decades with fewer than 100 babies are left out. See boys' names that became girls' names and French names that changed sex.
Look up Shelby with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Shelby&country=US" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Shelby
Is Shelby a male or female name?
Shelby is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 90%, based on 177,071 observations.
Why can the result for Shelby change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Shelby identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.