Jenny
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Jenny is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Sweden it is the 15th most common given name. In English, recorded as A device for spinning thread from fiber onto multiple spindles (also called spinning jenny).
- SESweden1 in 216(measured from records)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 553
- NONorway1 in 690
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 Jenny 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #500 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 579 (measured from records)
- 1 in 216 (inferred from the name graph)
≈740,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Jeny in CO Colombia.
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 a pet form of Jdhn, Alsatian and Swiss form of the personal name Johannes (see John).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jenny is read(measured from records)
Jenny is one spelling over 2 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.
- English58%
A device for spinning thread from fiber onto multiple spindles (also called spinning jenny).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish19%
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Jenny 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈740,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Jenny | 90 |
| PH Philippines | #103 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 764 | — | Jenny | 161 |
| US United States | #251 | 111,784 | 1 in 3K | 111K | Jenny | 579 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 870 | 47 | Jeny | 50 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 54,391 | 1 in 311 | 54K | Jenny | 56 |
| SE Sweden | #15 | 47,334 | 1 in 216 | 47K | Jenny | 146 |
| FI Finland | — | 17,937as Jenni | 1 in 311 | 20K | Jenny | 65 |
| HK Hong Kong | #61 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 553 | — | Jenny | 85 |
| NO Norway | #378 | 7,920 | 1 in 690 | 25K | Jenny | 86 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INEC — civil registry names; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); the co-datosgov-candidates 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)
Jenny 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.
from a pet form of Jdhn, Alsatian and Swiss form of the personal name Johannes (see John).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Swedish, Jenny (m.fl. former) är en engelsk smekform till → Jane. Det var ett av de mest populära namnen under 1970- och 1980-talet och är nu ett av de 30 vanligaste kvinnonamnen i Sverige. Kända svenska namnbärare är operasångerskan Jenny Lind (1820–87) och konstnären Jenny Nyström (1854–1946). I den rikssvenska almanackan 6 oktober och i den finlandssvenska 21 juli.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Diminutive form of Jeanne; «Dieu est miséricordieux».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Diminutif anglais de Jeanne/Jean; utilisé comme prénom indépendant.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- Jenny Lindb. 1820SESwedish opera singer (1820–1887)
- Eleanor Marxb. 1855GBnot in their usual nameEnglish writer, translator, activist, and daughter of Karl Marx (1855–1898)
- Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holsteinb. 1858PLnot in their usual nameGerman Empress and Queen of Prussia (1858–1921)
- Jenny Agutterb. 1952GBBritish film and television actress (born 1952)
- Jenny Shimizub. 1967USAmerican model and actress
- Jenny Erpenbeckb. 1967DEGerman opera director and writer (born 1967)
- Charlotte Perrellib. 1974SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer
- Jenny Mollenb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Jenny Hanb. 1980USAmerican writer (born 1980)
- Jenny Slateb. 1982USAmerican actress and comedian (born 1982)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 120 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 111K | #503 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 54K | #19 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 47K | #84 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 30K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 25K | #174 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 17K | #139 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 7.9K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 5.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 394 | #503 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 176 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 142 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 47 | #76 |
Reference works 9
- 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)
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 are other forms of the name Jenny?
- In the etymology graph, Jennifer, Janet and Janice are forms of the same name in other languages; Jenelle, Janetta and Jenessa are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Jean and Jane.
- Where does the name Jenny come from?
- from a pet form of Jdhn, Alsatian and Swiss form of the personal name Johannes (see John). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Jenny a male or female name?
- Jenny 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 does the name Jenny mean?
- In English, A device for spinning thread from fiber onto multiple spindles (also called spinning jenny).
- How common is the name Jenny?
- In the United States, the national register counted 111,784 people named Jenny in 2020, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Jenny compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Jenny is the 15th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Jenny have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 745 thousand people named Jenny in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jenny.
- Where is Jenny most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jenny is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 216 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Jenny?
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/jennyThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Jenny” — the 15th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.