The English and Polish name Joanna ultimately derived from the Greek name Ioanna. It originated from the Hebrew male name Yochanan meaning ‘Yahweh is gracious’.
Joanna is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Joanna 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, Joanna ranks 257. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 7 were named Joanna. In the entire USA, approximately 103,708 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Joanna. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Joanna is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Joanna for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Joanna is therefore one of only 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Joanna is a very special name, which reached its peak of popularity only in the last quarter of the 20th century, ranking in the top 100 girls' names in our SmartGenius statistics: With position 86 Joanna has never been more popular than back in 1984.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Joanna was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 996 babies were named Joanna in the USA in 2022, ranking it #294 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1907, when it was only ranked at #631 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 32 girls were named Joanna.
The name Joanna may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Joanna is apparently especially popular in California. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 814 women in California is called Joanna. In total, that’s 18,312 women who feel addressed when the name Joanna is shouted loudly across California and who ensure that their name makes it to #193 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Joanna as the answer a total of 103,642 times. This places Joanna at #324 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Joanna as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
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 six letters, the name Joanna is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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 Joanna 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 Joanna, you can simply say:
Joker
Orange
Apple
Nut
Nut
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Joanna
Joanna
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
J
O
A
N
N
A
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
O
A
N
N
A
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. Joanna sounds like this:
