Shirley
Just over a hundred women in Poland carry it, and no girls have been given it this century, so meeting one would stick in your memory. The name comes from an English word for a "bright clearing".
Shirley Pronunciation
What Shirley means
Where Shirley comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Shirley began as an English place, then a surname, before it ever named a child. The parts are Old English: `scir`, bright, joined to `leah`, a clearing in woodland. Put together they give the short meaning the site records, bright clearing, in Polish jasna polana. For a long time only men and villages carried it.
Charlotte Brontë changed that. Her 1849 novel `Shirley` gave the name to a spirited heroine, and readers took it as a girl's name from there. The book did the work that no committee could.
Shirley Temple made it famous a second time. In the 1930s the child actress put the name on cinema marquees across the English-speaking world, and its use among newborn girls climbed fast.
A Polish teacher reading Shirley off a class register meets an English word, not a Polish one. The name stays foreign here, uncommon on any imieniny list. What it means underneath is plain enough: a bright clearing in the trees.
How many people are named Shirley
1 in 212678 women in Poland is named Shirley. 106 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3328 among female names.
Shirley as a middle name
Shirley is a first name for 106 women in Poland and a middle name for another 31, a 77/23 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1273rd, between Selin (31) and Waldemara (31).
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#1271 Santana31
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#1272 Selin31
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#1273 Shirley31
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#1274 Waldemara31
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#1275 Wendy31