Shields
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person from North or South Shields’, North and South Tyneside, from ‘sheds’ (temporary fishermen’s huts); (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Siadhaill, ‘descendant of Siadhail’, a personal name of unknown
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈʃiɫdz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shields is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5.8K
- IEIreland≈1 in 5.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 495 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
50,832 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iceland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Northor(measured from records)
- Irish GaelicO(measured from records)
(i) ‘person from North or South Shields’, North and South Tyneside, from ‘sheds’ (temporary fishermen’s huts); (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Siadhaill, ‘descendant of Siadhail’, a personal name of unknown origin and meaning.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shields counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #603 | 50,832 | 1 in 6.5K | 51K | Shields | 495 |
| GB United Kingdom | #521 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | 9.2K | Shields | 221 |
| CA Canada | #607 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | — | Shields | 191 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Shields | 9 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Shields | 13 |
| AU Australia | #620 | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Shields | 167 |
| IE Ireland | #475 | ≈880 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Shields | 77 |
| NZ New Zealand | #498 | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | — | Shields | 85 |
| IS Iceland | #949 | ≈69 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Shields | 4 |
50,832 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- James Shieldsb. 1806USIrish-American politician and general (1806-1879)
- Barry Fitzgeraldb. 1888IEnot in their usual nameIrish actor (1888–1961)
- Arthur Shieldsb. 1896IEIrish actor
- Frank Shieldsb. 1909USAmerican tennis player and actor (1909-1975)
- Carol Shieldsb. 1935CAAmerican/Canadian author
- David Shieldsb. 1956USAmerican author and film director
- Kevin Shieldsb. 1963USIrish musician and record producer
- Brooke Shieldsb. 1965USU.S. model and actress
- Claressa Shieldsb. 1995USAmerican boxer
- Willow Shieldsb. 2000USAmerican actress
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 51K | #672 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 50K | #623 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 49K | #676 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 9.2K | #836 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Shields mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person from North or South Shields’, North and South Tyneside, from ‘sheds’ (temporary fishermen’s huts); (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Siadhaill, ‘descendant of Siadhail’, a personal name of unknown… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Shields?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈʃiɫdz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Shields have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 51 thousand people named Shields, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shields.
- How common is the name Shields?
- In the United States, the national register counted 50,832 people named Shields in 2010, about 1 in 6.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Shields compared with other names?
- In the United States, Shields is the 603rd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shields?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shieldsThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Shields” — the 603rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.