Like Joan, Jane is a feminine form of John. This name is ultimately derived from the Hebrew name Yochanan meaning ‘Yahweh is gracious’.
Jane is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Jane isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Jane ranks 277. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 7 were named Jane. In total, there are currently 360,327 people – children, adults and seniors – named Jane living in the United States, which is approximately 0.11 % of the entire population.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Jane is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Jane for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Jane is therefore one of only 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Jane is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed 35 Jane easily made it into the Top 100 of our SmartGenius stats for female first names and has never been more popular than back in 1946.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Jane was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 1,081 babies were named Jane in the USA in 2022, ranking it #269 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2006, when it was only ranked at #449 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 665 girls were named Jane.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Jane. Because: There are women and girls named Jane in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Jane is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Hawaii, where Jane ranks on place 38. The greatest chance of meeting Jane, however, is in Vermont, where one in 210 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 428 women and girls and in Nevada, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 1,731 women and girls for their name before you once get Jane as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter J is a particularly popular initial letter for girls' names. That’s because 6.8% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters for girls’ names are A, S and M.
With four letters, the name Jane is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
This means that with 6.8% of all girls' names that begin with the letter J, this first letter is much more common than the other letters on average. And Jennifer is the girls' name starting with J, which is the most common of all.
If your name is Jane and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Jane, you can simply say:
Joker
Apple
Nut
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Jane
Jane
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
J
A
N
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
J
A
N
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Jane sounds like this:
