Joel

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Joel boys named Joel

By the numbers

Total US births

282,250

Estimated living today

235,000

Median age today

39

Peak year

1985

Best rank

67th

Rank in 2025

219th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

2,595 / 279,655

How old the living Joels are

born that year still alive today

Of the 282,250 babies given the name since 1880, about 235,000 are alive — 83 in every hundred. Roughly 43,000 of them are children and 32,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1986 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 Hebrew

From Hebrew יוֹאֵל (“Yahweh (is) God”). As a medieval French and English given name, it is also from Breton Judicaël (related to Joyce and Jocelyn). Cf.

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

Notable Joels

• Haley Joel Osment (born 1988)American actor
• Joël Matip (born 1991)Cameroonian-German association football player
• Joel (1 BC–700 BC)biblical prophet associated with the Book of Joel
• Joel McHale (born 1971)American actor and comedian
• Joel Kinnaman (born 1979)Swedish-American actor
• Joel Campbell (born 1992)Costa Rican footballer
• Joel Griffiths (born 1979)Australian association football player
• Joel Grey (born 1932)American actor, singer, dancer, director, and photographer

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

Where Joel is most common

• CA34,601
• TX29,823
• NY27,074
• IL12,535
• PA11,541
• FL11,114
• MI10,440
• OH9,474
• GA7,895
• MN7,578

Relative to how many babies each state records, Joel is most concentrated in Minnesota (1.5×), Alaska (1.4×), Texas (1.4×), North Dakota (1.3×).

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

Names of 1985

The most popular boys’ names the year Joel peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Daniel
• David

All the names of 1985

Joel 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.

Joel: 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, Joel is most concentrated in Solothurn, where 0.52% of children were given it – 269 of them.

Joel: rank by region

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

In 2006, Joel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2023, Joel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Joel was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joel appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (352nd).

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

Joel by city

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

Joel 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 – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Joel lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 29,713 men called Joel 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 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Joe
• Joey
• Joelle
• Joesph
• Joellen
• Joella
• Joetta
• Joeseph
• Joell
• Joette
• Joely
• Joeann

Joel against another name

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

• Joel vs Joe
• Joel vs Joey
• Joel vs Joelle
• Joel vs Joesph
• Joel vs Joellen
• Joel vs Joella

Compare Joel with a name of your own