Janes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a pet form of the personal name Jan, a vernacular form of Greek Joannes (see John)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Janes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 24K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 28K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 358 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.9K (inferred from the name graph)
7,659 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a pet form of the personal name Jan, a vernacular form of Greek Joannes (see John).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Janes 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 | 7,659 | 1 in 43K | 9.3K | Janes | 358 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 24K | listed | Janes | 179 |
| CA Canada | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Janes | 151 |
| BR Brazil | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 125K | 4K | — | 3 |
| IT Italy | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Janes | 13 |
| AU Australia | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Janes | 118 |
| HR Croatia | 711 | 1 in 5.9K | 711 | — | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Janes | 29 |
7,659 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)
Janes 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.
In English, patronymic from the personal name Jan (see Jayne).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, ‘son of Jane’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, Patronymischer Familienname zu Johannes, evtl. aus der Kurzform Jahn im starken Genitiv. 229 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, Patronym zu Johannes; 229 Belege. Varianten Jannes und Janes.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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)
- Henry Fisk Janesb. 1792USAmerican politician (1792-1879)
- Leroy Lansing Janesb. 1838USAmerican missionary
- Alfred Janesb. 1911GBpainter (1911-1999)
- Paul Janesb. 1912DEGerman footballer (1912-1987)
- Percy Janesb. 1922CACanadian writer (1922–1999)
- J. Robert Janesb. 1935CACanadian writer
- Darko Janešb. 1957HRactor
- Richard Janesb. 1978GBBritish film director
- Jamey Janesb. 1987USAmerican pornographic actress
- Dominic Janesb. 1994USAmerican 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 49 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.3K | #3,733 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.7K | #4,632 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.5K | #4,384 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.4K | #6,621 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 16 | #25,497 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 13 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- Wikipedia surname 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Janes mean, and where does it come from?
- from a pet form of the personal name Jan, a vernacular form of Greek Joannes (see John). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Janes have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.7 thousand people named Janes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled janes.
- Where is Janes most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Janes is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 5.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Janes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,659 people named Janes in 2010, about 1 in 43 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Janes?
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/janesThe 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, “Janes”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.