Janet
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Diminutive of Jane/Jeanne, Hebrew 'God is gracious'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Janet is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 28th most common given name.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 405(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 481
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 499
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 Janet 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)
- #159 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 606 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 405 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,600,000 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)
Locally spelled Jennet in TM Turkmenistan.
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)
Diminutive of Jane/Jeanne, Hebrew 'God is gracious'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Janet 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 | — | ≈2,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 540 | — | Janet | 60 |
| US United States | #71 | 429,159 | 1 in 775 | 429K | Janet | 606 |
| NG Nigeria | #114 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 672 | — | Janet | 103 |
| GB United Kingdom | #54 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 405 | 5 | Janet | 309 |
| PH Philippines | #109 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Janet | 137 |
| TM Turkmenistan | #112 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 251 | — | Jennet | 18 |
| IE Ireland | #75 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 481 | — | Janet | 101 |
| SG Singapore | #28 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 613 | — | Janet | 106 |
| NZ New Zealand | #63 | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 499 | 17 | Janet | 141 |
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); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Janet 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 Swahili, English given name; also used as a shortening of Jannat
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
2 Originally a diminutive of Jane, already in common use in the Middle English period. It remained in use in Scotland and in some parts of England well into the 17th century and was revived at the end of the r9th century to much more widespread use, while still retaining its popularity in Scotland. Short form: pJan.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, from a pet form (not necessarily female) of the personal name Jan (see Jayne).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Acronym of Joint Academic Network.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Janet är en engelsk smekform till → Jane. En känd namnbärare är den amerikanska artisten Janet Jackson (f. 1966).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Janet Gaynorb. 1906USAmerican actress (1906–1984)
- Janet Jaganb. 1920USpresident of Guyana, prime minister of Guyana, nurse (1920-2009)
- Kim Hunterb. 1922USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1922-2002)
- Janet Leighb. 1927USAmerican actress (1927–2004)
- Janet Renob. 1938USformer Attorney General of the United States (1938-2016)
- Janet Yellenb. 1946US78th United States Secretary of the Treasury
- Janet Napolitanob. 1957USAmerican politician, lawyer, and academic administrator (born 1957)
- Janet McTeerb. 1961GBBritish actress
- Janet Jacksonb. 1966USAmerican singer, songwriter, dancer and actress (born 1966)
- Janet Montgomeryb. 1985GBBritish 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 107 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 429K | #108 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 386 | #108 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 61 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1993 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1995 | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2000 | 4 | #525 |
Reference works 9
- 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)
- 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
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 are other forms of the name Janet?
- In the etymology graph, Janice, Juana and Joanne are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Jean and Jane.
- What does the name Janet mean, and where does it come from?
- Diminutive of Jane/Jeanne, Hebrew 'God is gracious'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- Is Janet a male or female name?
- Janet 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.
- How common is the name Janet?
- In the United States, the national register counted 429,159 people named Janet in 2020, about 1 in 775 residents.
- How common is Janet compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Janet is the 28th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Janet have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.6 million people named Janet in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled janet.
What do you want to know about Janet?
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/janetThe 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, “Janet” — the 28th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.