Joan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Feminine form of John, from Latin Jo(h)anna; gaelicised as Siobhán
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Joan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 3rd most common given name.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 412(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 521
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 604
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 Joan 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)
- #102 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 597 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 412 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,900,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Joanne in GB United Kingdom, AU Australia, ID Indonesia and Joann in FI Finland.
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)
Feminine form of John, from Latin Jo(h)anna; gaelicised as Siobhán.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Joan 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 | — | ≈1,900,000 est. | ≈1 in 721 | — | Joan | 70 |
| US United States | #49 | 306,627 | 1 in 1.1K | 297K | Joan | 597 |
| PH Philippines | #67 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 604 | — | Joan | 162 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Joanne | 80 |
| GB United Kingdom | #28 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 457 | 41 | Joanne | 335 |
| AU Australia | #37 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 547 | 101 | Joanne | 292 |
| FI Finland | — | 12,498as Joona | 1 in 446 | 13K | Joann | 20 |
| IE Ireland | #48 | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 521 | — | Joan | 135 |
| JM Jamaica | #3 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 412 | — | Joan | 27 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Joan 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 English, Alternative form of jone.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Se Joni.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, English form of Jeanne; «Dieu est miséricordieux».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In Danish, a female given name from English borrowed from English, popular in the 1950s and the 1960s
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In roa-opt, John (one of four persons of the Bible)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Joan Mirób. 1893ESSpanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist (1893–1983)
- Joan Robinsonb. 1903GBEnglish economist (1903–1983)
- Joan Crawfordb. 1905USAmerican actress (1908–1977)
- Joan Bennettb. 1910USAmerican actress (1910–1990)
- Lauren Bacallb. 1924USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1924–2014)
- Ruth Bader Ginsburgb. 1933USnot in their usual nameAmerican lawyer and jurist (1933–2020)
- Joan Baezb. 1941USAmerican contemporary folk musician (born 1941)
- Joni Mitchellb. 1943CAnot in their usual nameCanadian musician
- Joan Enric Vives Sicíliab. 1949ESSpanish bishop
- Chynab. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and actress (1969-2016)
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 109 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 297K | #165 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9.8K | #165 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 300 | #1,418 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 232 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 222 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 148 | #2,297 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 120 | — |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- 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
- What does the name Joan mean, and where does it come from?
- Feminine form of John, from Latin Jo(h)anna; gaelicised as Siobhán. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Joan?
- In the etymology graph, Jan is a form of the same name in other languages; Joni is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Joan a male or female name?
- Joan 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 Joan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 306,627 people named Joan in 2020, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Joan compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Joan is the 3rd most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Joan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 million people named Joan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joan.
What do you want to know about Joan?
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/joanThe 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, “Joan” — the 3rd most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.