Joel

256,017 people in America carry this name — ranked #211 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it JOH uhl

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

JH OW1 AH0 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 256,017 2020 Census
  • Rank #211 Common
  • Per 100,000 84.8 about 1 in 1,295 people
  • As a surname 1,821 ranked #15,493 the other way round

Where Joel comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “strong willed”.

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.

Joel through the years

273,550 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1985, with 4,663 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. 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.

Middle names that fit Joel

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

Better avoided

  • Joel John — same opening
  • Joel James — same opening
  • Joel Joseph — same opening

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.

Boys or girls: who is called Joel?

99.4% men
1,571 women

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

The states where Joel is most common

In Iowa the name is given 1.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Iowa ×1.5
  • North Dakota ×1.4
  • Minnesota ×1.4
  • Nebraska ×1.4
  • South Dakota ×1.4

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 53.8%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.2%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 34.1%
  • Two or more races — 2.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.3%

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.

Names built the same way as Joel

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.

Try it First-Year Costs

Open First-Year Costs 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