Shelley is from the Old English place name *scylf-leah* ("ledge meadow, sloping meadow") — used as a surname-to-first-name in 20th-century America. **A top-200 US baby name from 1969 to 1986**. **Shelley Winters (1920-2006)** — **American actress; two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress — *The Diary of Anne Frank* (1959, as Mrs. Van Daan) and *A Patch of Blue* (1965); four total Oscar nominations**; *A Place in the Sun* (1951), *Lolita* (1962), *The Poseidon Adventure* (1972). **Mary Shelley (1797-1851)** — **English author of *Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* (1818) — among the most-influential English novels and the founding text of science fiction; wrote it at age 18 during the famous "year without a summer" at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva**. **Daughter of feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft; wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley**. **Shelley Long (born 1949)** — Diane Chambers on NBC's *Cheers* (1982-1987); five-time Emmy nominee. **Shelley Duvall (1949-2024)** — American actress; *The Shining* (1980), *Annie Hall* (1977), *Popeye* (1980). **Shelley Hack** — Tiffany Welles on *Charlie's Angels*. **Pete Buttigieg's mother**.
Featured throughout English literature and Hollywood cinema.
Shelley reduces to three — the number of Frankenstein.