Jan
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from Johan; see JOHN; first attested Simon Ianes 1297 MinAcctCo
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common given name.
- CZCzechia1 in 18(measured from records)
- RORomania1 in 48as Ioan
- IEIreland≈1 in 53as John
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Jan itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #6 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 731 (measured from records)
- 1 in 18 (inferred from the name graph)
3,125,123 named John, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled John in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines and 2 more, Ioan in RO Romania and Ион in MD Moldova.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Johannes, Hebrew Yôḥānān 'Yahweh is gracious'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jan is read(measured from records)
Jan is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English41%
- German12%
- Polish9.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jan in Polish.
- Dutch5.7%
Dutch given name corresponding to John; source of patronymic surnames like Jansen.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jan counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #3 | 3,125,123as John | 1 in 106 | 3.1M | John | 731 |
| NG Nigeria | #11 | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 177 | — | John | 190 |
| GB United Kingdom | #1 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 59 | 1.1K | John | 496 |
| PH Philippines | #3 | ≈750,000 est. | ≈1 in 145 | listed | John | 261 |
| CZ Czechia | #1 | 587,876 | 1 in 18 | 588K | Jan | 233 |
| RO Romania | #151 | 447,697as Ioan | 1 in 48 | 448K | Ioan | 96 |
| MD Moldova | #332 | 100,110as Ion | 1 in 34 | 100K | Ион | 50 |
| IE Ireland | #1 | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 53 | — | John | 245 |
3,125,123 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); MVČR — living population register 2017; DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; e-services.md — living population register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Jan is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
,9 As a boy’s name this represents a revival of Middle English jan, a byform of John, or an adoption of the common European form with this spelling. As a girl’s name it is a short form of names such as pJanet
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Dutch, Danish, North German, English, Polish, etc.; Czech and Slovak (Jan): from the personal name Jan, a vernacular form of Latin Johannes (see John).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jan van Eyckb. 1390BEFlemish painter (c.1390–1441)
- Jan Brueghelb. 1568BEFlemish painter (1568–1625)
- Comeniusb. 1592CZnot in their usual nameCzech teacher, educator, philosopher and writer (1592-1670)
- Jan Steenb. 1626NLpainter from the Northern Netherlands (1626–1679)
- Ignacy Jan Paderewskib. 1860UAPolish pianist, composer, supporter of Poland's independence movements, politician, Prime Minister of reborn Poland (1860–1941)
- Jan Christian Smutsb. 1870ZASouth African statesman and military leader (1870–1950)
- Jan Tinbergenb. 1903NLDutch economist (1903–1994)
- Jan Peter Balkenendeb. 1956NLPrime Minister of the Netherlands from 2002 to 2010
- Jan Kollerb. 1973CZCzech association football player
- Klaas-Jan Huntelaarb. 1983NLDutch association football player (born 1983)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 131 sources across 62 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 588K | #2 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 294K | #2 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 56K | #645 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 26K | #645 |
| RO Romania | DEPABD — name-day population snapshot | 2023 | 4.5K | — |
| RO Romania | DEPABD — resident population names | 2023 | 4.5K | — |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 292 | #581 |
Reference works 10
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Jan come from?
- from Johannes, Hebrew Yôḥānān 'Yahweh is gracious' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Jan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.1 million people named John, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Jan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jan is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 18 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Jan?
- In the etymology graph, John, Joan and Jack are forms of the same name in other languages; Hans, Hanne and Hannes are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Jan a male or female name?
- Jan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Jan?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒæn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Jan mean?
- In English, from Johan; see JOHN; first attested Simon Ianes 1297 MinAcctCo
- How common is the name Jan?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 587,876 people named Jan, about 1 in 18 residents.
- How common is Jan compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jan is the 3rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/janThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Jan” — the 3rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.