Jo
About 180,911 American babies have been named Jo since 1881, most of them around 1954. In 2025 it ranked 3,975th. About 115,000 Jos are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 71.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jo boys named Jo
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 180,911
- Estimated living today
- 115,000
- Median age today
- 71
- Peak year
- 1954
- Best rank
- 53rd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,975th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 179,057 / 1,854
How old the living Jos are
born that year still alive today
Of the 180,911 babies given the name since 1881, about 115,000 are alive — 64 in every hundred. Roughly 600 of them are children and 91,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1954 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
Clipping or hypochoristic form of various female given names beginning with Jo.., primarily Joan, Joanna, etc.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jos
- Jo Nesbø (born 1960)Norwegian novelist, musician and economist
- Jo Van Fleet (1915–1996)American actress
- Jo Cox (1974–2016)British politician
- Jo Jorgensen (born 1957)American politician, 2020 Libertarian Party presidential candidate
- Jo Swinson (born 1980)British politician and leader of the Liberal Democrats
- Debra Jo Rupp (born 1951)American actress
- Jo Hyeon-woo (born 1991)South Korean footballer
- Jo Jo White (1946–2018)American basketball player
People named Jo with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jo is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jo is most concentrated in Arkansas (2.2×), Oklahoma (2.1×), West Virginia (2.0×), Mississippi (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1954
The most popular girls’ names the year Jo peaked:
Jo elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Jo | 2,375 | 103rd |
| England and Wales girls | Jo | 221 | 736th |
| France boys | Jo | 205 | 3,052nd |
| Belgium boys | Jo | 157 | 318th |
| Scotland girls | Jo | 133 | 320th |
| France girls | Jo | 105 | 868th |
| England and Wales boys | Jo | 74 | 2,318th |
| Ireland girls | Jo | 73 | 349th |
| Belgium girls | Jo | 46 | 744th |
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.
Jo: rank by region
In 2009, Jo was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jo | 857 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Jo 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Jo | 5 | 25 |
| Finland boys | Jo | — | 8 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Jo against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.