Entry № 9545 · Irish origin

Sheila Sheila — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ SHEE-lah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Irish
Meaning
"Blind / heavenly (Sheila E.; Sheila Heen; Sheila Jackson Lee)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Medieval (Irish)

A name that means "blind / heavenly (sheila e.; sheila heen; sheila jackson lee)".

Sheila is the anglicized Irish Síle — itself from the Latin Cecilia ("blind, heavenly"). In Australia, "Sheila" is informal slang for "woman" (since 1832).

Blind / heavenly.

The name in its native script.

Síle
Transliteration
Síle
Pronunciation
/ ˈʃiː.lə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Sheila stands.

Sheila does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Sheilas before her.

Real people
Sheila E.
American singer-percussionist.
born 1957
Sheila Heen
Harvard lecturer; Difficult Conversations.
born 1962
Sheila Jackson Lee
American politician.
1950 – 2024
In fiction
Sheila
Australian slang for woman.
1832

Names connected to Sheila.

The number behind Sheila.

9

The Giver

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Sheila reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.