Joanna
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A piano
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒoʊænə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Joanna is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Poland it is the 18th most common given name.
- PLPoland1 in 95(measured from records)
- CNChina≈1 in 3.2K
- FIFinland1 in 50as Johanna
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 Joanna 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)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 477 (measured from records)
- 1 in 95 (inferred from the name graph)
≈430,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Johanna in FI Finland, SE Sweden, ZA South Africa and Ioanna in BR Brazil, CY Cyprus.
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)
Joanna is a classic biblical name meaning 'God is gracious'. She was a strong and faithful woman in the New Testament who supported Jesus's ministry and was one of the first people to discover the empty tomb, making her a witness to the resurrection.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
How Joanna is read(measured from records)
Joanna 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.
- English64%
A piano.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Polish13%
- Spanish7.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Joanna 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Joanna 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 | — | ≈430,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Joanna | 58 |
| PL Poland | #18 | 401,861 | 1 in 95 | 402K | Joanna | 240 |
| BR Brazil | — | 238,493as Joana | 1 in 888 | 270K | Ioanna | 22 |
| FI Finland | #344 | 111,505as Johanna | 1 in 50 | 151K | Johanna | 67 |
| ZA South Africa | #29 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 521 | — | Johanna | 76 |
| SE Sweden | #140 | 73,968as Johanna | 1 in 138 | 74K | Johanna | 109 |
| CY Cyprus | #66 | 6,885as Ιωαννα | 1 in 184 | 6.9K | Ioanna | 62 |
| IS Iceland | — | 1,785as Jóhanna | 1 in 196 | 2K | — | 2 |
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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); CYSTAT — Name frequency (2011 Population Census); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)
Joanna 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.
Joanna is a classic biblical name meaning 'God is gracious'. She was a strong and faithful woman in the New Testament who supported Jesus's ministry and was one of the first people to discover the empty tomb, making her a witness to the resurrection.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Joanna is derived from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָה (Yôḥānāh), which means 'Yahweh has been gracious'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Joanna represents faithful discipleship, service, and the crucial role of women in Jesus's ministry and the early church. As one of the Myrrhbearers and a primary witness to the empty tomb, she is a key figure in the resurrection narrative, demonstrating courage and devotion by supporting Jesus publicly and seeking to care for his body after his crucifixion.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In Irish, Form of Joan; once fairly popular, now given way to Joanne.
as a nameIrish first 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)
- Joanna la Beltranejab. 1462ESCastillian infanta and queen, queen consort of Portugal
- Joanna Pettetb. 1942GBBritish-born Canadian actress (1942–2026)
- Joanna Cassidyb. 1945USAmerican actress
- Joanna Lumleyb. 1946GBBritish actress and former model
- Joanna Goingb. 1963USAmerican actress
- Jennifer Anistonb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1969)
- Elizabeth Mitchellb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Joanna Angelb. 1980USAmerican pornographic actress and director
- JoJob. 1990USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and actress
- Emily Careyb. 2003GBnot in their usual nameBritish 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 102 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 402K | #10 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 402K | #10 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5.5K | #578 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 4.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.2K | #3,079 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 4.2K | #355 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 3.6K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 3.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 2.5K | #5,258 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 372 | — |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 286 | — |
| PL Poland | Ministry of Digitalization — Imiona nadawane dzieciom w Polsce (2000–present) | 2025 | 286 | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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 Joanna come from?
- Joanna is a classic biblical name meaning 'God is gracious'. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- How do you pronounce Joanna?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒoʊænə/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Joanna?
- In the etymology graph, Jean, Jane and Janet are forms of the same name in other languages; Asia and Joasia are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Joanna mean?
- In English, A piano.
- Is Joanna a male or female name?
- Joanna 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.
- In which country does Joanna have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 431 thousand people named Joanna in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joanna.
- Where is Joanna most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Joanna is densest in Poland — about 1 in 95 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Joanna?
- In Poland, the national register counted 401,861 people named Joanna in 2026, about 1 in 95 residents.
- How common is Joanna compared with other names?
- In Poland, Joanna is the 18th most common given name of 25,969 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Joanna?
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/joannaThe 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, “Joanna” — the 18th most common given name in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.