Meaning and history
From an English surname, possibly a variant of Selby, Shelby was once used rarely as a masculine name before becoming popular as a feminine name after the main character in The Woman in Red (1935) and later being reinforced by Julia Roberts’s character in Steel Magnolias (1989).
20062006: 2,620 births, rank #133
2007: 2,351 births, rank #149
2008: 2,148 births, rank #158
2009: 1,935 births, rank #167
2010: 1,680 births, rank #184
20112011: 1,462 births, rank #217
2012: 1,447 births, rank #220
2013: 1,239 births, rank #259
2014: 1,114 births, rank #294
2015: 1,080 births, rank #299
20162016: 986 births, rank #337
2017: 836 births, rank #373
2018: 738 births, rank #424
2019: 634 births, rank #495
2020: 606 births, rank #501
20212021: 556 births, rank #549
2022: 503 births, rank #595
2023: 448 births, rank #656
2024: 446 births, rank #657
20252025: 444 births, rank #649
Shelby rose from #658 to #649 for girls between 2024 and 2025. Its highest annual birth count came in 1991, with 10,220 births.