Janet

429,159 people in America carry this name — ranked #108 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it JA nuht

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

JH AE1 N AH0 T — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 429,159 2020 Census
  • Rank #108 Common
  • Per 100,000 142.1 about 1 in 772 people

The meaning and origin of Janet

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “grace of the Lord”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Janet name popularity by year

557,835 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1954, with 18,506 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Janet

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Janet Jennifer — same opening
  • Janet Julie — same opening
  • Janet Teresa — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

What Janet is short for

Janet is a short form of Jane.

Short forms as recorded in a 19th-century glossary of Christian names, so the list is old rather than complete.

Going quiet

Janet has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Janet a boy's or a girl's name?

0.1% men
428,773 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

How to spell Janet

Janet is how 84% of them spell it — 510,998 people answer to the sound.

  • Janet 84%
  • Jan 16%

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Names built the same way as Janet

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 82.8%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 7.4%
  • Two or more races — 1.6%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.2%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The same name elsewhere

  • Jane English
  • Seoin Irish
  • Nozzo Italian
  • Jenny English
  • Hanne German
  • Hanka Lus
  • Jessie Scottish
  • Jeanne French
  • Jantje Dutch
  • Ivanna Russian
  • Ivanku Bulg
  • Zaneta Russian
  • Jehanne French
  • Jantina Dutch

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin