January

org · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

January is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: pegba. The name of the moon corre- sponding with January.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
288 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

pegba. The name of the moon corre- sponding with January

Sources 1

  • Vocabulary of the Mende Language

Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

January counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where January is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—2.5KJanuary288
PL Poland—434——
FI Finland—20—1
GY Guyana—14—1
SE Sweden—10—6

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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

January is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Jàñúåry

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Janūary

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Jâñûáry

52 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

January 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 New England, a translation of French Janvier.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, born or baptized in January, or having some other particu- Jarre i. French: metonymic occupational name for a potter, from OF jarre earthenware vessel (OProv. jarra, from 322 Jarren Arabic jarrah, a word brought back by the Crusaders, which has also given Eng.^ttr). 2. Frisian: cogn. of Geary2. Jeavon Var. (of i): Jarrier.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • Americanized form of the Latin personal name Januarius or its Italian derivative Gennaro, which was borne by a number of early Christian saints, most famously a 3rd-century bishop of Benevento who became the patron of Naples.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, The first month of the Gregorian calendar, following the December of the previous year and preceding February. Abbreviation: Jan or Jan.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, month

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)

175018001850190019502000January Suchodolski, b. 1797John January, b. 1882Thomas January, b. 1886Charles January, b. 1888Lois January, b. 1913Don January, b. 1929Krzysztof Krawczyk, b. 1946January Makamba, b. 1974January Jones, b. 1978January Zyambo, b. 1980

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 30 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting January
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.5K#12,255
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.5K#12,083
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.3K#12,168
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 2025202514#611
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2#71,682
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 January mean, and where does it come from?
pegba. The name of the moon corre- sponding with January Recorded by Vocabulary of the Mende Language.
In which country does January have the most bearers?
January is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled january.

What do you want to know about January?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/january

The same 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), 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, “January”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how January parses inside a full name →