Joan

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Joan boys named Joan

Girls and boys called Joan

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Joan crossed from girls to boys in 2000, and has stayed there for 26 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 76% boys, and in 2025 it was 51%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 132 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

488,939

Estimated living today

230,000

Median age today

75

Peak year

1932

Best rank

5th

Rank in 2025

1,085th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

481,238 / 7,701

How old the living Joans are

born that year still alive today

Of the 488,939 babies given the name since 1880, about 230,000 are alive — 47 in every hundred. Roughly 5,300 of them are children and 183,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1950 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 French

A clipped or hypochoristic form of Joanna, from Latin Joanna, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννα, from Hebrew יוֹחָנָה, the feminized form of יְהוֹחָנָן which produced John and its many doublets. As a placeholder name, cf.

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

Notable Joans

• Joan of Arc (1412–1431)French folk heroine (1412–1431), military leader who crowned Charles VII and Roman Catholic saint, canonized 500 years after her death
• Joan Miró (1893–1983)Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist
• Joan Crawford (1906–1977)American actress
• Joan Baez (born 1941)American contemporary folk musician
• Joan Fuster (1922–1992)Spanish writer
• Joan Rivers (1933–2014)American comedian, actress, and television host
• Joan Fontaine (1917–2013)British actress
• Joan Collins (born 1933)English actress, author and columnist

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

Where Joan is most common

• NY82,300
• PA48,086
• IL31,243
• NJ27,815
• MA25,374
• CA25,255
• OH23,893
• MI22,042
• WI16,294
• MN12,895

Relative to how many babies each state records, Joan is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.2×), New York (2.2×), Massachusetts (2.1×), New Jersey (2.1×).

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

Names of 1932

The most popular girls’ names the year Joan peaked:

• Mary
• Betty
• Barbara
• Dorothy
• Joan
• Patricia

All the names of 1932

Joan 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.

Joan: 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, Joan is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.04% of children were given it – 35 of them.

Joan: rank by region

In 2010, Joan was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2022, Joan was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names – 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.

Joan by city

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

Joan 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 Joan lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 52,993 men called Joan and 384 women called Joan 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 46 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 6 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.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 12 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 40 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

• Joanne
• Joann
• Joanna
• Joaquin
• Joana
• Joanie
• Joao
• Joannie
• Joah
• Joachim
• Joane
• Joab

Joan against another name

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

• Joan vs Joanne
• Joan vs Joann
• Joan vs Joanna
• Joan vs Joaquin
• Joan vs Joana
• Joan vs Joanie

Compare Joan with a name of your own