Humanverse

Jan vs Janne

American parents have registered 76,934 Jans since 1880, against 511 Jannes. Jan is still ahead, with 52 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jan against Janne, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jan Janne

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Jan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1902 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1916, when Jan had 33 and Janne had 5.

Side by side

  Jan Janne
Total US births 76,934511
Most in one year 3,76121
Babies in 2025 52under 5
Estimated living today 57,000390
Median age today 6766
Peak year 19561951
Best rank 136th girls2,182nd girls
Rank in 2025 14,942ndunranked
First recorded 19021916
Girls / boys 54,531 / 22,403511 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jan Janne
Norway 47,8577,473
Belgium 1,8442,929
France 1,715175

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jan and Janne.