Shepard

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Shepard, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

• Dax
• Fletcher
• Liara
• Foster
• Fisher
• Nixon
• Rhett
• Riker
• Tanner
• Bishop
• Crosby
• Cooper

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Shepard is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil

  Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

  Also written Shépárd, Shëpard

• Greek surname3 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

  Also written Sheppard, Σεπαρντ

60 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Shepard is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• In English, Misspelling of shepherd.

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

• Ernest Shepardb. 1879GBBritish artist (1879-1976)
• Alan Shepardb. 1923USAmerican astronaut, first American in space, lunar explorer (1923–1998)
• Roger Shepardb. 1929USAmerican psychologist (1929–2022)
• Sam Shepardb. 1943USAmerican playwright and actor (1943–2017)
• Judith Chapmanb. 1951USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
• Judy Shepardb. 1952USco-founder of the Matthew Shepard Foundation
• Richard Shepardb. 1965USAmerican screenwriter
• Dax Shepardb. 1975USAmerican podcaster and actor
• Matthew Shepardb. 1976USAmerican LGBT student and murder victim
• Sara Shepardb. 1977USAmerican author

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

What does the name Shepard mean, and where does it come from?

OE scēaphyrde ‘shepherd’; first attested William Sepherd 1279 RH (O) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.

How do you pronounce Shepard?

A machine transcription gives /ʃɛpəd/ (IPA) for English.

In which country does Shepard have the most bearers?

In the United States, the national register counted about 39 thousand people named Shepard, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shepard.

How common is the name Shepard?

In the United States, the national register counted 39,430 people named Shepard in 2010, about 1 in 8.4 thousand residents.

How common is Shepard compared with other names?

In the United States, Shepard is the 700th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.