Jolly
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname for someone of a cheerful or attractive disposition, from Middle English, Old Frenchjoli(f) ‘merry’, ‘happy’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒɒli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jolly is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 11K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 13K
- USUnited States1 in 21K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 409 (measured from records)
- 1 in 773 (inferred from the name graph)
15,827 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nickname for someone of a cheerful or attractive disposition, from Middle English, Old Frenchjoli(f) ‘merry’, ‘happy’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jolly 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 | 15,827 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Jolly | 409 |
| FR France | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | 1.1K | — | 9 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Jolly | 49 |
| UG Uganda | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | 1 | — | 25 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | Jolly | 226 |
| AU Australia | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Jolly | 148 |
| DM Dominica | 96 | 1 in 773 | 96 | — | 3 |
| GD Grenada | 22 | 1 in 5.1K | 22 | — | 1 |
15,827 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Jolly 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.
In English, Full of merriment and high spirits; jovial; joyous; merry.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, joker
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Julius Jollyb. 1823DEGerman politician (1823-1891)
- Friedrich Jollyb. 1844DEGerman neurologist and psychiatrist (1844–1904)
- Julius Jollyb. 1849DEGerman politician and Indologist (1849-1932)
- Pete Jollyb. 1932USAmerican musician (1932–2004)
- Richard Jollyb. 1934GBBritish economist
- Alison Jollyb. 1937USAmerican Primatologist
- Judith Jolly, Baroness Jollyb. 1951GBBritish educator and politician (born 1951)
- David Jollyb. 1972USAmerican lobbyist and politician
- Emikab. 1986GBnot in their usual nameBritish DJ and music producer (1986-)
- Treesa Jollyb. 2003INIndian badminton player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 54 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 839 | #10,870 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 366 | #10,870 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 5 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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)
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
- What does the name Jolly mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname for someone of a cheerful or attractive disposition, from Middle English, Old Frenchjoli(f) ‘merry’, ‘happy’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Jolly?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɒli/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jolly have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Jolly, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jolly.
- Where is Jolly most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jolly is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 773 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Jolly?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,827 people named Jolly in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Jolly?
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/jollyThe 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, “Jolly”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.