Jane
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Jane is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the Philippines it is the 11th most common given name. Recorded meaning: from the medieval personal name Jan, a form of John; later Jane became a female name.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 413(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 514
- DKDenmark1 in 561
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 Jane 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)
- #219 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 616 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 413 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,100,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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 medieval personal name Jan, a form of John; later Jane became a female name.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jane 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 | — | ≈2,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 674 | — | Jane | 96 |
| US United States | #122 | 356,607 | 1 in 933 | 354K | Jane | 616 |
| GB United Kingdom | #44 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 413 | 9 | Jane | 373 |
| NG Nigeria | #425 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | listed | Jane | 114 |
| PH Philippines | #11 | ≈88,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Jane | 187 |
| AU Australia | #43 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 514 | 107 | Jane | 303 |
| DK Denmark | #117 | 10,464 | 1 in 561 | 10K | Jane | 146 |
| NZ New Zealand | #41 | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 580 | 15 | Jane | 179 |
| LV Latvia | — | 5,503as Zane | 1 in 342 | 5.5K | — | 20 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population 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)
Jane 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 French, English form of Jeanne/Jean, Hebrew Yohanan, 'God is gracious'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Well-known feminine form of John, from Old French Jehane; gaelicised as Sinéad.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, variant spelling of Catalan Gener ‘January’, from Latin Januarius.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, given name Jan, a var. of John. (As a given name, Jane was not specialized as a female form until the 17th cent.) Vars.: Jain(e), Jayne; Jean; Jenn(e), Genn. Patrs.: Ja(y)nes, Jeynes; Jean(e)s, Jeens, Jeneson; Jan(ni)s, Janson; Jenns, Jenness, Jen(n)ison.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Originally a feminine form of John, from the Old French form Je(h)anne.
as a nameA concise dictionary of 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)
- Lady Jane Greyb. 1537GBQueen of England and Ireland in July 1553
- Jane Addamsb. 1860USAmerican feminist social activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, philosopher, and writer (1860–1935)
- Nellie Blyb. 1864USnot in their usual nameAmerican journalist
- Shirley Templeb. 1928USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and diplomat (1928–2014)
- Jane Goodallb. 1934GBEnglish primatologist and anthropologist (1934–2025)
- Barbara Liskovb. 1939USnot in their usual nameAmerican computer scientist
- Jane Birkinb. 1946FRBritish-French actress and singer (1946–2023)
- Victoria Nulandb. 1961USnot in their usual nameAmerican diplomat (born 1961)
- Olivia Wildeb. 1984USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and film director (born 1984)
- Lily Collinsb. 1989GBnot in their usual nameBritish-American actress (born 1989)
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 130 sources across 69 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #16,926 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 801 | #29,473 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 766 | #29,142 |
Reference works 7
- 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)
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 Jane mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval personal name Jan, a form of John; later Jane became a female name. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Jane?
- In the etymology graph, Jean, Joan and Juana are forms of the same name in other languages; Janet, Janice and Jenny are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Jane a male or female name?
- Jane 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 Jane have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.1 million people named Jane in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jane.
- How common is the name Jane?
- In the United States, the national register counted 356,607 people named Jane in 2020, about 1 in 933 residents.
- How common is Jane compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Jane is the 11th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jane?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/janeThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Jane” — the 11th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.