Jean
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) from Jehan, a form of John; first attested William Gene 1275 RH (Sf). (ii) from Genoa; first attested Henry, Francis de Gene 1255 RH (St), 1309 LLB D
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒin/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jean is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Cameroon it is the most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 88(inferred from the name graph)
- CMCameroon≈1 in 111
- BEBelgium≈1 in 165
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #253 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 519 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 88 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,000,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- HebrewYôḥānān(measured from records)
- GermanicGodefroy(measured from records)
From Hebrew Yôḥānān, meaning 'God has granted grace'; also an Anglo-Saxon form of Geoffrey, from Germanic Godefroy.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jean is read(measured from records)
Jean is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English52%
(i) from Jehan, a form of John; first attested William Gene 1275 RH (Sf). (ii) from Genoa; first attested Henry, Francis de Gene 1255 RH (St), 1309 LLB D
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- French32%
From Hebrew Yôḥānān, meaning 'God has granted grace'; also an Anglo-Saxon form of Geoffrey, from Germanic Godefroy.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
French form of Hebrew Yôḥānān ‘Yahweh is gracious’; used in the text as a father’s name in patronymics.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
From Hebrew Yohanan, 'God is gracious'; St Jean-Baptiste.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
French form; became Gioan, Giannetti, Giovanni in Italy, Jans in Holland, Johanne/Hans/Hanns in Germany, John in England.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
French male given name; base form from which variants and surnames are made.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
- Spanish5.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jean in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jean 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 | — | ≈2,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 685 | — | Jean | 54 |
| FR France | #2 | ≈770,000 est. | ≈1 in 88 | 1.9M | Jean | 499 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #1 | ≈590,000 est. | ≈1 in 174 | — | Jean | 57 |
| US United States | #549 | 270,231 | 1 in 1.2K | 228K | Jean | 519 |
| CM Cameroon | #1 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 111 | — | Jean | 93 |
| GB United Kingdom | #654 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 429 | — | Jean | 210 |
| BE Belgium | #2 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 165 | 576 | Jean | 213 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Statbel — Noms de famille (family names). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jean-Honoré Fragonardb. 1732FRFrench painter (1732–1806)
- Agassizb. 1807CHnot in their usual nameSwiss-American naturalist (1807–1873)
- Jean Jaurèsb. 1859FRFrench / Occitan socialist leader (1859-1914)
- Jean Perrinb. 1870FRFrench physicist (1870–1942)
- Jean Piagetb. 1896CHSwiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic (1896–1980)
- Frédéric Joliot-Curieb. 1900FRnot in their usual nameFrench scientist (1900-1958)
- Jean Chrétienb. 1934CAprime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003
- François Bayroub. 1951FRnot in their usual nameformer Prime Minister of France (2024–2025)
- Britney Spearsb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer, songwriter, actress and model (born 1981)
- Emma Stoneb. 1988USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and producer
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 151 sources across 82 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1.9M | #114 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 228K | #198 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 42K | #198 |
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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- Where does the name Jean come from?
- From Hebrew Yôḥānān, meaning 'God has granted grace'; also an Anglo-Saxon form of Geoffrey, from Germanic Godefroy. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Jean?
- In the etymology graph, Johann, Yannick and Yoann are forms of the same name in other languages; Jessie is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Jean a male or female name?
- Jean is a male 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.
- What does the name Jean mean?
- In English, (i) from Jehan, a form of John; first attested William Gene 1275 RH (Sf). (ii) from Genoa; first attested Henry, Francis de Gene 1255 RH (St), 1309 LLB D
- How do you pronounce Jean?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒin/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jean have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.0 million people named Jean in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jean.
- How common is the name Jean?
- In the United States, the national register counted 270,231 people named Jean in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Jean compared with other names?
- In Cameroon, Jean is the most common given name of 9,064 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jean?
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/jeanThe 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, “Jean” — the most common given name in Cameroon. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.