Janai
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Janai is a biblical name, traditionally masculine, meaning "God answers" (Biblical Names Compiled Database)
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/xanai/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Janai is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 2,524 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020.
- USUnited States1 in 132K(measured from records)
- MXMexico≈1 in 290K
- BRBrazil1 in 294K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 108 (measured from records)
- 1 in 132K (inferred from the name graph)
2,524 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Janai
- Spanish:/xanai/(machine-generated) model-generated
- Portuguese:/ʒɐnaj/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Janai is a biblical name, traditionally masculine, meaning "God answers." It belongs to a chief of the tribe of Gad mentioned in the Old Testament. While historically male, it is sometimes used as a gender-neutral name in modern times.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Janai 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,524 | 1 in 132K | 2.4K | Janai | 108 |
| IN India | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 579K | 1 | Janai | 6 |
| BR Brazil | 719 | 1 in 294K | 787 | Janai | 56 |
| MX Mexico | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 286K | 3 | Janai | 63 |
| CA Canada | ≈65 est. | ≈1 in 632K | 11 | Janai | 7 |
| PT Portugal | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 258K | listed | Janai | 8 |
| GY Guyana | 2 | 1 in 375K | 2 | — | — |
2,524 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; the mx-cdmx-nombres register; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls); the pt-irn-lista-nomes register; the ca-statcan-baby-names register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)Janai is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
The name Janai is believed to mean "whom Jehovah answers" or "God has answered."
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Derived from a Hebrew root meaning "responsive" or "he answers."
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)- Janai Nelsonb. 1971USAmerican lawyer
- Janai Kaib. 1994USAmerican professional wrestler
- Yanai PostelnikGBnot in their usual nameNew Zealand-British dharma teacher
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)Evidence
(measured from records)24 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Janai come from?
- Janai is a biblical name, traditionally masculine, meaning "God answers." It belongs to a chief of the tribe of Gad mentioned in the Old Testament. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- How do you pronounce Janai?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /xanai/; in Portuguese /ʒɐnaj/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Janai a male or female name?
- Janai is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Brazil (Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)).
- What does the name Janai mean?
- Recorded meaning: Janai is a biblical name, traditionally masculine, meaning "God answers."
- Which countries have the most people named Janai?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Janai, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled janai. After it come India, Brazil, Mexico and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Janai most common?
- Janai is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 132 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Janai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,524 people named Janai in 2020, about 1 in 132 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Janai?
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/janaiThe 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, “Janai” — ranked 6380th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.