Shirley (name)

Shirley may be:

Given name

Before the publication of the novel Shirley by Charlotte Brontë in 1849 Shirley was an uncommon, but distinctly male name and would have been a very unusual name for a woman. Today it is regarded as a distinctly female name and an uncommon male name.

The use of Shirley as a popular given name in the 1950s was emphasized through the television sitcom Laverne & Shirley.

• Shirley (novel), by Charlotte Brontë (1849)
• Shirley Abicair, entertainer and writer
• Shirley Abrahamson, judge
• Shirley Babashoff, swimmer
• Shirley Ballas, dancer
• Shirley Bassey, singer
• Shirley D. Bowler [female], Louisiana Republican
• Shirley Crabtree, [male] British wrestler ("Big Daddy")
• Shirley Clamp, Swedish pop singer
• Shirley Jones, actress
• Shirley Kwan, Hong Kong cantopop
• Shirley MacLaine, actress
• Shirley Manson, singer, lead vocalist of the band Garbage
• Shirley Muldowney, first woman to receive a licence to drive a top fuel dragster by the NHRA
• Shirley Povich, [male] sportswriter
• Shirley Sherrod, a United States Department of Agriculture employee who was wrongfully fired in 2010 due to a speech she made that was allegedly distorted by a conservative website.
• Graeme Strachan ("Shirley" Strachan), lead singer of 1970s Australian rock band Skyhooks
• Shirley Temple, child actress
• Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, British politician
• Shirley Yeung, 2001 Miss Hong Kong, TVB actress
• Shirley Massie, V.I.P. living in Johns Creek, Georgia

All pages beginning with "Shirley"

Surname

• Shirley is a rather uncommon surname, with pockets of Shirleys living in Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Canada, New Zealand, and parts of Great Britain. A work on the genealogy of the various branches of the Shirley family was published as Stemmata Shirleiana by E.P Shirley in 1841.
  • Shirley is the surname of the title character in "Anne of Green Gables", a novel published in 1908 by Lucy Maude Montgomery about an orphan girl in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Notably, there are no Shirleys listed in current (2007) telephone books for the entire province. It is likely Montgomery had heard the name associated with the neighboring province of Nova Scotia.

• Bob Shirley, American baseball player
• Drew Shirley, guitarist
• James Shirley (or Sherley) (1596 – 1666), English dramatist
• Jerry Shirley, English drummer
• Paul Shirley, American basketball player and writer
• Randall Shirley, Award-winning Canada-based American journalist
• Simon Shirley, Australian decathlete
• Steve Shirley (Dame Stephanie Shirley), UK businesswoman
• William Shirley (1694-1771), British colonial governor of Massachusetts

In fiction

• Shirley the Loon, a fictional character in Tiny Toon Adventures
• Shirley, the surname of the title character in Anne of Green Gables
• Shirley Fenette, a character in the anime Code Geass
• Shirley Yeager from the anime Strike Witches
• Shirley, a fictional character in The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3
• Shirley, a hairdresser in the videogame MySims
• Shirley Fennes, a character in the videogame Tales of Legendia
• Chuck Shirley, a prophet in Supernatural
• Shirley Feeney, titular character in Lavern & Shirley
• In the 1980 movie Airplane!, the word "surely" was misinterpreted by a main character to be the name "Shirley", resulting in the quote "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."