Joy
About 143,324 American babies have been named Joy since 1883, most of them around 1957. In 2025 it ranked 419th. About 107,000 Joys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 55.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Joy boys named Joy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 143,324
- Estimated living today
- 107,000
- Median age today
- 55
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 143rd
- Rank in 2025
- 419th
- First recorded
- 1883
- Girls / boys
- 140,694 / 2,630
How old the living Joys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 143,324 babies given the name since 1883, about 107,000 are alive — 74 in every hundred. Roughly 13,000 of them are children and 35,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1970 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 English
From the noun joy, first used by Puritans in the 17th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Joys
- Joy Adamson (1910–1980)Austrian-British naturalist, painter, writer, collector and illustrator
- Bethany Joy Lenz (born 1981)American actress
- Joy (born 1996)South Korean singer and actress, born 1996
- Da'Vine Joy Randolph (born 1986)American actress
- Joy Behar (born 1942)American comedian, television host, actress and writer
- Joy Harjo (born 1951)American Poet Laureate
- Joy Page (1924–2008)American actress
- Joy Lauren (born 1989)American actress
People named Joy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Joy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Joy is most concentrated in Hawaii (2.5×), Oklahoma (1.8×), Arkansas (1.4×), Louisiana (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular girls’ names the year Joy peaked:
Joy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Joy | 9,545 | 79th |
| England and Wales girls | Joy | 1,867 | 467th |
| Switzerland girls | Joy | 839 | 171st |
| Belgium girls | Joy | 670 | 239th |
| Ireland girls | Joy | 654 | 185th |
| Italy girls | Joy | 558 | — |
| New Zealand girls | Joy | 487 | 62nd |
| France boys | Joy | 460 | 1,637th |
| Scotland girls | Joy | 425 | 213th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Joy | 93 | 215th |
| England and Wales boys | Joy | 78 | 2,400th |
| Switzerland boys | Joy | 53 | 691st |
| Belgium boys | Joy | 26 | 748th |
| Poland girls | Joy | 4 birth registrations | 711th |
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.
Joy: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Joy | 644 | 0.052% | 112th |
| German boys | Switzerland | Joy | 23 | 0.002% | 658th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Joy | 168 | 0.039% | 141st |
| French boys | Switzerland | Joy | 7 | 0.002% | 517th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Joy | 27 | 0.041% | 80th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Joy | 23 | 0.035% | 125th |
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, Joy is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.08% of children were given it – 48 of them.
Joy: rank by region
In 2025, Joy was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Joy | 226 | 12 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joy appears in the lists for Province of Namur (68th).
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.
Joy by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 10 | 390th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Joy 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 | Joy | 2,711 | 5,286 |
| the Netherlands boys | Joy | 264 | 549 |
| Finland girls | Joy | 65 | 283 |
| Finland boys | Joy | 11 | 19 |
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 Joy lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 764 women called Joy 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Araba/Álava | Joy | 45 | 0.259 | 435 |
| Navarra | Joy | 33 | 0.096 | 837 |
| Balears, Illes | Joy | 48 | 0.077 | 938 |
| Gipuzkoa | Joy | 26 | 0.069 | 993 |
| Guadalajara | Joy | 8 | 0.057 | 1,039 |
| Bizkaia | Joy | 31 | 0.051 | 1,207 |
Listed in 27 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 25 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
Joy 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.