Shanita
Girls' nameMeaning not yet documented
Shanita has been given to 3,450 babies in the U.S. since 1959. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1978, with 184 recorded.
Babies named Shanita, 2008
1 in 393,000
Shanita over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Shanita?
Shanita had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2008, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2008
- 1 in 393,000
- 10 of 3,930,727 births
- Among girls only
- 1 in 189,000
- <0.01% of girls
- Rank, 2008
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 272,458 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Shanita sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2008 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 272,458 children born in 2008 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Shanita. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Shanitas were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Shanita was born before 1983 — so the typical Shanita is around 42 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1980s
- 47.4% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 48.1%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 3,450
- People you could plausibly meet
1980s — 47.4% of all recorded uses (1,636).
Is Shanita rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1978 (184)
- Years since peak
- 47
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 23.5% average annual change
Spellings of Shanita
Shanita is not the most common spelling — Anita is, with 31.0% against Shanita's 0.50%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Where Shanita is used
Across 1910–2025, Shanita was most concentrated in District of Columbia — about 1 in 9,091 girls, against 1 in 54,410 across all states with data. It was least common in Wisconsin (1 in —).
Most concentrated
- 1District of Columbia1 in 9,091
- 2Maryland1 in 20,000
- 3North Carolina1 in 20,000
- 4Georgia1 in 25,000
- 5Michigan1 in 25,000
- 6Virginia1 in 25,000
- 7Alabama1 in 33,333
- 8Florida1 in 33,333
Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Shanita has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Shanita around the world
Where Shanita ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.
- England & Wales1997–2002#4,137in 2002
Popularity data from Office for National Statistics. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0.
Shanita by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Shanita
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Names with a curve like Shanita
Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Shanita, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.
Sibling names for Shanita
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.