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Jonah vs Jonna

American parents have registered 86,075 Jonahs since 1880, against 5,564 Jonnas. Jonah is still ahead, with 2,867 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jonah against Jonna, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jonah Jonna

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

Of the 143 years in which either name was published, Jonah for 116 years and Jonna for 27 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Jonah Jonna
Total US births 86,0755,564
Most in one year 2,998261
Babies in 2025 2,86711
Estimated living today 84,0005,000
Median age today 1450
Peak year 20081963
Best rank 136th boys623rd girls
Rank in 2025 128th8,860th
First recorded 18801928
Girls / boys 792 / 85,2835,564 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Jonnas alive today are over 50; half the Jonahs are over 14. That is 36 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Jonah Jonna
Switzerland 762178

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: Jonah and Jonna.