Joyce
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the Breton personal name Iodoc, literally “little lord”
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒɔjs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Joyce is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 37th most common given name.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 546(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 554
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 577
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 Joyce 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)
- #299 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 590 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 546 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,500,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 the Breton personal name Iodoc, literally “little lord”.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Joyce 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 | — | ≈2,500,000 est. | ≈1 in 554 | — | Joyce | 87 |
| US United States | #126 | 324,179 | 1 in 1K | 324K | Joyce | 590 |
| BR Brazil | — | 100,072as Joice | 1 in 2.1K | 128K | — | 12 |
| GB United Kingdom | #131 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 679 | — | Joyce | 269 |
| NG Nigeria | #634 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Joyce | 90 |
| CA Canada | #142 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 820 | 4 | Joyce | 258 |
| HK Hong Kong | #224 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 577 | — | Joyce | 102 |
| SG Singapore | #37 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 546 | — | Joyce | 130 |
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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Joyce is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from French personal name Joy; strong Connacht clan in the barony of Ross (Joyce’s Country), Galway
as a nameIrish family names
In English, Occasionally used in Ireland; feminine form of Celtic masculine Jodoc, used in Brittany.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, from Breton Iodoc, a saint's name; first attested Josce, Iocius c1140–50 DC (Lancashire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A name occasionally used in Ireland. It is a feminine form of the Celtic masculine name Jodoc, once used in Brittany.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, An English and Irish surname originating as a patronymic.
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)
- Joyce Caryb. 1888GBAnglo-Irish writer (1888-1957)
- Joyce Comptonb. 1907USAmerican film actress (1907-1997)
- Joyce Redmanb. 1915GBAnglo-Irish actress (1915-2012)
- Joyce Van Pattenb. 1934USAmerican actress
- Joyce Carol Oatesb. 1938USAmerican author (born 1938)
- Joyce Bandab. 1950MW4th President of Malawi
- Joyce Beattyb. 1950USUnited States Representative from Ohio since 2013
- Jane Seymourb. 1951GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Joyce DiDonatob. 1969USAmerican opera mezzo-soprano
- Joyce Jonathanb. 1989FRFrench singer
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 113 sources across 65 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 324K | #157 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 71K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 70K | #425 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 42K | #881 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 773 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 620 | #157 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 371 | #425 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 226 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 39 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 4 | #938 |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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 does the name Joyce mean, and where does it come from?
- From the Breton personal name Iodoc, literally “little lord”. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Joyce a male or female name?
- Joyce 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 Joyce?
- In the etymology graph, Jocelyn, Joice and Joost are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Joyce have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.5 million people named Joyce in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joyce.
- How common is the name Joyce?
- In the United States, the national register counted 324,179 people named Joyce in 2020, about 1 in 1.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Joyce compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Joyce is the 37th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Joyce?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɔjs/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Joyce?
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/joyceThe 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, “Joyce” — the 37th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.