Joke
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Joke is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Dutch; laughter, the laughing one.
- BEBelgium≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 3.3K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 5.8K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 125 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈37,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belgium, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Dutch; laughter, the laughing one.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Joke 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #796 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | — | Joke | 52 |
| NL Netherlands | #112 | 5,274 | 1 in 3.3K | 5.2K | Joke | 96 |
| BE Belgium | #499 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 9 | Joke | 98 |
| CN China | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 830K | — | Joke | 7 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 246K | 1 | Joke | 59 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 95K | — | Joke | 5 |
| LY Libya | — | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 140K | — | Joke | 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns); the de-leipzig-vornamen 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)
Joke 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.
In English, An amusing story.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, synonym of Witz
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In urj-pro, river
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)
- Joke Smitb. 1933NLDutch feminist and politician (1933–1981)
- Joke Swiebelb. 1941NLDutch politician (born 1941)
- Joke van Leeuwenb. 1952NLDutch writer, illustrator and performer (born 1952)
- Joke Tjalsmab. 1957NLDutch actress (born 1957)
- Joke Silvab. 1961NGNigerian film actress, director and businesswoman
- Joke de Kruijfb. 1965NLDutch singer
- Joke Schauvliegeb. 1970BEBelgian politician
- Joke Reijndersb. 1971NLDutch writer
- Joke Devynckb. 1972BEactress
- Joke De Bruynb. 1981BEBelgian actress
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 19 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 5.2K | #392 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 3.6K | #918 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1995 | 102 | #118 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1998 | 92 | #123 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1996 | 91 | #127 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1997 | 87 | #140 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 1999 | 81 | #141 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2000 | 65 | #163 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2001 | 61 | #172 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2002 | 58 | #171 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2003 | 46 | #216 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 44 | #7,239 |
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 Joke mean, and where does it come from?
- Dutch; laughter, the laughing one. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Joke a male or female name?
- Joke 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 Joke?
- In the etymology graph, Jean, Jane and Janet are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Joke have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 37 thousand people named Joke in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joke.
- How common is the name Joke?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5,274 people named Joke, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Joke compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Joke is the 796th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Joke?
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/jokeThe 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, “Joke” — the 796th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.