Joyce
About 512,232 American babies have been named Joyce since 1882, most of them around 1942. In 2025 it ranked 1,071st. About 280,000 Joyces are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 73.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Joyce boys named Joyce
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 512,232
- Estimated living today
- 280,000
- Median age today
- 73
- Peak year
- 1942
- Best rank
- 13th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,071st
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 509,332 / 2,900
How old the living Joyces are
born that year still alive today
Of the 512,232 babies given the name since 1882, about 280,000 are alive — 55 in every hundred. Roughly 5,300 of them are children and 217,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 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 Celtic languages
Medieval (Middle English) given name from Old French Josse, name of a seventh century saint Latinized as Iodocus, from Breton Iodoc, diminutive of iudh (“lord”), from Proto-Celtic *yowdos.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Joyces
- Joyce Banda (born 1950)4th President of Malawi
- Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938)American author
- Joyce DiDonato (born 1969)American opera mezzo-soprano
- Joyce Jonathan (born 1989)French singer
- Joyce Chepchumba (born 1970)athletics competitor
- Joyce Meyer (born 1943)American author
- Joyce Cary (1888–1957)Anglo-Irish writer
- Joyce Cooper (1909–2002)British swimmer, Olympic silver medallist
People named Joyce with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Joyce is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Joyce is most concentrated in Vermont (1.9×), South Dakota (1.7×), West Virginia (1.7×), Kentucky (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1942
The most popular girls’ names the year Joyce peaked:
Joyce elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Joyce | 4,845 | 223rd |
| Belgium girls | Joyce | 1,590 | 35th |
| England and Wales girls | Joyce | 804 | 804th |
| Ireland girls | Joyce | 783 | 144th |
| France boys | Joyce | 585 | 1,342nd |
| Switzerland girls | Joyce | 251 | 361st |
| Scotland girls | Joyce | 227 | 160th |
| Belgium boys | Joyce | 5 | 1,377th |
| Poland girls | Joyce | 4 birth registrations | 658th |
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.
Joyce: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Joyce | 120 | 0.010% | 407th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Joyce | 110 | 0.025% | 161st |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Joyce | 21 | 0.032% | 87th |
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, Joyce is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.02% of children were given it – 31 of them.
Joyce: rank by region
In 2025, Joyce was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Joyce | 242 | 11 |
In 2022, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joyce appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (232nd).
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.
Joyce by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Joyce 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 | Joyce | 15,644 | 19,146 |
| the Netherlands boys | Joyce | 5 | 126 |
| Finland girls | Joyce | 44 | 87 |
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 Joyce lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 460 women called Joyce 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Joyce | 60 | 0.058 | 1,210 |
| Málaga | Joyce | 51 | 0.056 | 1,089 |
| Balears, Illes | Joyce | 25 | 0.040 | 1,521 |
| Almería | Joyce | 14 | 0.037 | 1,564 |
| Tarragona | Joyce | 14 | 0.032 | 1,738 |
| Girona | Joyce | 13 | 0.031 | 1,741 |
Listed in 19 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 33 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
Joyce 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.