Jan

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Jan boys named Jan

Girls and boys called Jan

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Jan crossed from girls to boys in 1984, having already crossed in 1924, and has stayed there for 42 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, and in 2025 it was 90%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 112 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

76,934

Estimated living today

57,000

Median age today

67

Peak year

1956

Best rank

136th

Rank in 2025

14,942nd

First recorded

1902

Girls / boys

54,531 / 22,403

How old the living Jans are

born that year still alive today

Of the 76,934 babies given the name since 1902, about 57,000 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 1,700 of them are children and 36,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Dutch

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Jans

• Jan Hus (1370–1415)Czech theologian, philosopher and preacher
• Jan van Eyck (1390–1441)Flemish painter (c.1390–1441)
• Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994)Dutch economist
• Jan Peter Balkenende (born 1956)Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 2002 to 2010
• Jan Neruda (1834–1891)Czech poet, theater reviewer, publicist, journalist and writer
• Jan Palach (1948–1969)Czech student who killed himself by self-immolation in protest
• Jan Vertonghen (born 1987)Belgian association football player
• Jan Matejko (1838–1893)Polish painter

People named Jan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Jan is most common

• CA7,406
• TX5,258
• NY4,967
• IL4,115
• PA3,848
• OH3,760
• MI3,260
• IN2,316
• FL1,999
• GA1,981

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jan is most concentrated in Hawaii (2.4×), Utah (1.9×), Oregon (1.7×), Iowa (1.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1956

The most popular girls’ names the year Jan peaked:

• Mary
• Debra
• Linda
• Deborah
• Susan
• Patricia

All the names of 1956

Jan elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Jan: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Jan is most concentrated in Appenzell Innerrhoden, where 0.64% of children were given it – 25 of them.

Jan: rank by region

In 2025, Jan was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2024, Jan was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2025, Jan was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland, and first in 2 of them. It has come first somewhere in 7 different years.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jan appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (178th) and Province of Antwerp (290th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Jan by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Jan among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Jan lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 14,395 men called Jan were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 37 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 15 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Janet
• Janice
• Jane
• Janie
• Janelle
• Janis
• Jana
• Janine
• Janette
• Janae
• Janna
• Janell

Jan against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Jan vs Jane
• Jan vs Janet
• Jan vs Janice
• Jan vs Janie
• Jan vs Janelle
• Jan vs Janis

Compare Jan with a name of your own