Shelva

Where Shelva comes from

Shelva hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1936
    First appearance
    #707 among girls, 89 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1937
    Peak, #470
    194 babies named Shelva — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1940
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #854.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes

No widely known Shelva turns up in the encyclopedias yet — the name is still all theirs to make famous.

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.