Joy

117,520 people in America carry this name — ranked #482 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it JOY

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

JH OY1 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 117,520 2020 Census
  • Rank #482 Common
  • Per 100,000 38.9 about 1 in 2,820 people
  • As a surname 13,910 ranked #2,532 the other way round

Where Joy comes from and what it means

Reads literally as “gladness, exhilaration of spirits”.

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.

Joy name popularity by year

139,577 babies were given this name since 1883. The busiest year was 1957, with 2,943 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 more 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 Joy

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Joy Jennifer — same opening
  • Joy Julie — same opening
  • Joy Janet — 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.

On the way up

Joy is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

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

1.5% men
115,802 women

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

Names with the same rhythm as Joy

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

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

Spellings of Joy

Joy is how 27% of them spell it — 441,699 people answer to the sound.

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.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet 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