Jonah
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A classic biblical name meaning 'dove', symbolizing peace and spirit
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒoʊnə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jonah is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 5.2K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 7.2K
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
- 455 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
63,551 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A classic biblical name meaning 'dove', symbolizing peace and spirit.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jonah is read(measured from records)
Jonah is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English71%
Old Testament book; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Swahili10%
biblical Jonah; equivalent of Yunus
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
- Spanish5.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jonah in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Jonah 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 | — | 63,551 | 1 in 5.2K | 63K | Jonah | 455 |
| NG Nigeria | #781 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Jonah | 69 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | Jonah | 92 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | Jonah | 125 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 48K | 36 | Jonah | 140 |
| SE Sweden | — | 632 | 1 in 16K | 632 | Jonah | 25 |
| NO Norway | — | 461 | 1 in 12K | 1.6K | Jonah | 14 |
63,551 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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Jonah is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A classic biblical name meaning 'dove', symbolizing peace and spirit.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In Irish, Hebrew, ‘dove’. Occasionally used in Ireland; Jonah Barrington was an eighteenth-century Irish writer.
as a nameIrish first names
Dove
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)
- Jim Cummingsb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican voice actor
- Jonah Goldbergb. 1969USAmerican political writer and pundit
- Jonah Falconb. 1970USAmerican actor and writer
- Jonah Lotanb. 1973ILIsraeli actor
- Jonah Perettib. 1974USAmerican businessman (born 1974)
- Jonah Lomub. 1975NZNew Zealand rugby union player (1975–2015)
- Jonah Hillb. 1983USAmerican actor (born 1983)
- Nathan Dyerb. 1987GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1987)
- Jonah Hauer-Kingb. 1995GBBritish actor
- Jonah Bobob. 1997USAmerican actor
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 82 sources across 49 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 63K | #778 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 2.8K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.6K | #1,224 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 784 | #778 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 632 | #2,341 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 461 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 399 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 39 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 36 | #64 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 32 | #15,468 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 20 | #209 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 16 | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Jonah mean, and where does it come from?
- A classic biblical name meaning 'dove', symbolizing peace and spirit. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- Is Jonah a male or female name?
- Jonah 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.
- What are other forms of the name Jonah?
- In the etymology graph, Yunus, Jonas and Younes are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Jonah?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒoʊnə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jonah have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 64 thousand people named Jonah, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jonah.
- How common is the name Jonah?
- In the United States, the national register counted 63,551 people named Jonah in 2020, about 1 in 5.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Jonah compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Jonah is the 781st most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jonah?
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/jonahThe 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, “Jonah” — the 781st most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.