Jana
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Unusual feminine form of John; used in the Lowther family of Co. Meath
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈjaːna/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jana is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Czechia than in any other country, where it is the 8th most common given name.
- CZCzechia1 in 20(measured from records)
- SKSlovakia≈1 in 317
- EGEgypt≈1 in 2.1K
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 Jana 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.
- Czechia (measured from records)
- #349 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 332 (measured from records)
- 1 in 20 (inferred from the name graph)
529,888 people
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)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Яна in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, BY Belarus and 1 more.
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)
Kiswahili: 'yesterday'; also Eastern European: 'God's gracious gift'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jana is read(measured from records)
Jana 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.
- German35%
weibl. Vom., weibliche Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- English35%
Unusual feminine form of John; used in the Lowther family of Co. Meath.
as a nameIrish first names
- Czech5.8%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jana in Czech.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Jana 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | #8 | 529,888 | 1 in 20 | 530K | Jana | 197 |
| RU Russia | #73 | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 325 | #51 | Яна | 199 |
| CN China | — | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | — | Яна | 42 |
| UA Ukraine | #75 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 379 | listed | Яна | 120 |
| EG Egypt | #263 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Jana | 76 |
| BY Belarus | #77 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 261 | 3 | Яна | 48 |
| SK Slovakia | #35 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 317 | — | Jana | 165 |
529,888 people counted by MVČR — living population register 2017. 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: MVČR — living population register 2017; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE). 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)
Jana is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swahili, Kiswahili: 'yesterday'; also Eastern European: 'God's gracious gift'
as a nameAfrican Names
In Swedish, Jana är en femininform till → Jan och en kortform till → Johanna. Jfr även → Jaana.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Balarama (N); Hanuman (N); Siva (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
» Kumari (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit 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)
- Yang Chuan-kwangb. 1933TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese decathlete (1933–2007)
- Jana Novotnáb. 1968CZCzech tennis player (1968–2017)
- Liu Yangb. 1978CNnot in their usual nameChinese astronaut
- Jana Covab. 1980CZCzech pornographic actress
- Jane Darlingb. 1980CZnot in their usual nameCzech pornographic actress
- Yana Klochkovab. 1982UAUkrainian swimmer
- Jana Kramerb. 1983USAmerican singer and actress
- Yang Yangb. 1991CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
- Jana Burčeskab. 1993MKMacedonian singer
- Jerry Heilb. 1995UAnot in their usual nameUkrainian singer-songwriter and YouTuber
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 118 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 530K | #4 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 265K | #4 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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
- How do you pronounce Jana?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈjaːna/ (IPA) for German.
- Where does the name Jana come from?
- Kiswahili: 'yesterday'; also Eastern European: 'God's gracious gift' Recorded by African Names.
- In which country does Jana have the most bearers?
- In Czechia, the national register counted about 530 thousand people named Jana, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jana.
- Where is Jana most common?
- Jana is densest in Czechia, where the national register counts about 1 in 20 people carrying it.
- Is Jana a male or female name?
- Jana is a female 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 Jana?
- In the etymology graph, Ana, Ann and Nancy are forms of the same name in other languages; Anita, Anka and Anica are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Jana mean?
- In English, Unusual feminine form of John; used in the Lowther family of Co. Meath.
- How common is the name Jana?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 529,888 people named Jana, about 1 in 20 residents.
- How common is Jana compared with other names?
- In Czechia, Jana is the 8th most common given name of 16,679 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jana?
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/janaThe 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, “Jana” — the 8th most common given name in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.