Shelly
Peaked in 1966, 59 years ago — when 3,886 U.S. babies got the name.
A name that crested in the 1960s and has all but disappeared since.
How to read this — sources & method
Source. U.S. Social Security card applications, 1880–2025. A name is published only in years it was given to at least 5 babies, so rare and very recent names can be missing or clipped.
Raw, not modeled. Every number here is counted, not estimated: yearly births, national rank, peak year, and the median birth year (the year by which half of everyone ever given the name had been born).
“Peak” is the year the name was most common relative to all births that year — its cultural high-water mark, not just its largest raw count.
Modern rank-equivalent compares rank position across eras (a #40 name then vs. a #40 name today), not absolute frequency — far fewer names were recorded a century ago.
The Ghost, and the birth-year badge, are assigned by fixed rules over the name’s curve (a giant of its day, all but gone now.).
We deliberately don’t print a “typical age” — estimating how many bearers are still living needs a mortality model, which is an estimate, not a count. The median birth year above is the honest, unmodeled version.