Jed
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Jed is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Mainly U.S.: now generally used as an independent given name, this was ori- ginally a short form of the biblical name Jedidiah.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 30K
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)
- Sources
- 434 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Mainly U.S.: now generally used as an independent given name, this was ori- ginally a short form of the biblical name Jedidiah. This means ‘beloved of God’ in Hebrew, and was used as an alternative name of King Solomon (2 Samuel 12:25). It was a favourite with the Puritans, who considered themselves, too, to be loved by God, but the full form fell out of favour along with other rare or un- wieldy Old Testament names. See also Ged.
Sources 2
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jed 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 | — | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Jed | 16 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Jed | 115 |
| US United States | — | 8,309 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Jed | 434 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 30K | 3 | Jed | 195 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 9 | Jed | 156 |
| TN Tunisia | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Jed | 25 |
| NZ New Zealand | #872 | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 10 | Jed | 70 |
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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); 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)
Jed is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Serbo-Croatian, anger, rage, fury
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mkj, sea water; salt
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In mkj, seawater
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Czech, poison
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Breton, jet ; calcul
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
In Breton, jais
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
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)
- Jed Proutyb. 1879USAmerican actor (1879–1956)
- Jed Harrisb. 1900USAustrian-born American producer and director (1900-1979)
- Jed Allanb. 1935USAmerican actor (1935–2019)
- Jed Graefb. 1942USAmerican swimmer
- Jed Rubenfeldb. 1959USAmerican lawyer and novelist
- Jed Brophyb. 1963NZNew Zealand film actor
- Jed Mercuriob. 1966GBBritish television writer, producer and director
- Jed Reesb. 1970CACanadian actor
- Jed Whedonb. 1974USAmerican screenwriter and musician
- Jed Kurzelb. 1976AUAustralian musician and film composer
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 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.3K | #2,792 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 76 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 39 | #2,792 |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 1944 | 17 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2024 | 10 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2016 | 9 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2017 | 6 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2017 | 6 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2017 | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2019 | 3 | #701 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2015 | 3 | #415 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2022 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Jed mean, and where does it come from?
- Mainly U.S.: now generally used as an independent given name, this was ori- ginally a short form of the biblical name Jedidiah. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003).
- Is Jed a male or female name?
- Jed 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.
- In which country does Jed have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Jed in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jed.
- What are other forms of the name Jed?
- In the etymology graph, it is recorded as a short form of Jedidiah.
- How common is the name Jed?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,309 people named Jed in 2020, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Jed compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Jed is the 872nd most common given name of 26,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jed?
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/jedThe 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, “Jed” — the 872nd most common given name in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.