Joanna
About 112,067 American babies have been named Joanna since 1880, most of them around 1984. In 2025 it ranked 306th. About 99,000 Joannas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Joanna boys named Joanna
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 112,067
- Estimated living today
- 99,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1984
- Best rank
- 88th
- Rank in 2025
- 306th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 111,761 / 306
How old the living Joannas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 112,067 babies given the name since 1880, about 99,000 are alive — 88 in every hundred. Roughly 20,000 of them are children and 8,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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 Latin, from Hebrew
From Latin Joanna, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννα, from Hebrew יוֹחָנָה, the feminized form of יְהוֹחָנָן which produced John and its many doublets.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Joannas
- Joanna I of Naples (1326–1382)Queen of Naples
- Joanna of Bourbon (1338–1378)Queen of France
- Joanna Lumley (born 1946)British actress and former model
- Joanna la Beltraneja (1462–1530)Castillian infanta and queen, queen consort of Portugal
- Joanna Cassidy (born 1944)American actress
- Joanna Newsom (born 1982)American musician
- Joanna Russ (1937–2011)American author
- Joanna II of Naples (1373–1435)Queen of Naples
People named Joanna with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Joanna is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Joanna is most concentrated in California (1.7×), Arizona (1.3×), Nevada (1.2×), Texas (1.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1984
The most popular girls’ names the year Joanna peaked:
Joanna elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland girls | Joanna | 31,183 birth registrations | 24th |
| France girls | Joanna +1 spelling | 8,255 | 165th |
| England and Wales girls | Joanna | 4,115 | 125th |
| New Zealand girls | Joanna | 2,716 | 29th |
| Scotland girls | Joanna | 2,558 | 62nd |
| Ireland girls | Joanna | 1,485 | 104th |
| Norway girls | Joanna | 1,325 | 93rd |
| Belgium girls | Joanna | 499 | 404th |
| Switzerland girls | Joanna | 303 | 252nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Joanna | 207 | 111th |
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.
Joanna: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Joanna | 204 | 0.016% | 229th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Joanna | 96 | 0.022% | 175th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Joanna | 2 | 0.003% | 175th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Joanna | 1 | 0.027% | 11th |
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, Joanna is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.03% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Joanna: rank by region
In 2025, Joanna was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Joanna | 753 | 6 |
| Brussels | Joanna | 244 | 5 |
In 2025, Joanna was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Joanna | 86 | 19 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Joanna | 90 | 8 |
| Lubelskie | Joanna | 98 | 7 |
| Lubuskie | Joanna | 116 | 3 |
| Łódzkie | Joanna | 63 | 23 |
| Małopolskie | Joanna | 60 | 49 |
| Mazowieckie | Joanna | 72 | 54 |
| Opolskie | Joanna | 73 | 6 |
| Podkarpackie | Joanna | 78 | 11 |
| Podlaskie | Joanna | 68 | 11 |
| Pomorskie | Joanna | 68 | 27 |
| Śląskie | Joanna | 99 | 17 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Joanna | 55 | 10 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Joanna | 81 | 7 |
| Wielkopolskie | Joanna | 80 | 24 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Joanna | 76 | 10 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joanna appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Joanna by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Joanna 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Joanna | 6,899 | 21,022 |
| Finland girls | Joanna | 1,810 | 3,666 |
| the Netherlands boys | Joanna | — | 300 |
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 Joanna lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,703 women called Joanna were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Joanna | 79 | 0.143 | 705 |
| Tarragona | Joanna | 51 | 0.117 | 735 |
| Soria | Joanna | 5 | 0.113 | 662 |
| Lleida | Joanna | 25 | 0.112 | 726 |
| Barcelona | Joanna | 342 | 0.112 | 665 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Joanna | 108 | 0.105 | 776 |
Listed in 41 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 11 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
Joanna 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.