Shirley is from the Old English place-name *scīr* (bright) + *lēah* (clearing, meadow) — originally a Yorkshire surname. **Popularized as a feminine first name by Charlotte Brontë's 1849 novel *Shirley*, where the heroine is named Shirley because her parents wanted a son**. **A top-15 US baby name from 1935 to 1939, peaking at #2 in 1935** during the height of Shirley Temple's child-star career. **Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)** — **American politician; in 1968, became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress (Brooklyn, NY); in 1972, the first Black woman and first woman to seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination**. **Author of *Unbought and Unbossed* (1970)**. **Shirley Temple (1928-2014)** — American child film star (1934-39) and US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. **Shirley MacLaine (born 1934)** — American actress; Oscar for *Terms of Endearment* (1983). **Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)** — *The Lottery* (1948).
Subject of Anastasia C. Curwood's *Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics* (2022).
Shirley reduces to three — the number of unbought and unbossed.