I hope I'm explaining this properly, my knowledge of MySQL is quite limited.

Let's say I have a table with rows that have name and shape fields.

I'd like to select a bunch of rows from a table, but return all of the rows with unique shape field values first. If I have less than a certain number of rows, let's say 7, then I'd like to fill the remaining result rows with non-unique shape rows. The best way I can word it is that they're "ordered by uniqueness, and then by some other value".

So, I don't want: square, square, circle, circle, rectangle, square, triangle

I'd like to have: square, circle, rectangle, triangle, square, square, circle

Is this possible to do using a single SQL query? I'm using MySQL with PHP, if that makes any difference.

Thanks!