Jones
1,383,250 people in America carry this name — ranked #5 of 777.
A surname with a trade, a place or a father behind it.
Say it JOHNZ
1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
JH OW1 N Z — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
-
People counted 1,383,250 2020 Census
-
Rank #5 Very common
-
As a first name 3,692 ranked #4,862 the other way round
Where Jones comes from and what it means
Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “gracious”.
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.
Surnames with the same rhythm as Jones
Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.
- Moore 696,384
- White 636,798
- King 453,539
- Scott 421,499
- Hill 419,076
- Cook 290,386
- Bell 267,025
- Doe 262,774
- Ward 255,767
- Brooks 244,116
Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.
The likeliest full names
- Michael Jones ≈ 14,500 people
- John Jones ≈ 13,000 people
- James Jones ≈ 12,500 people
- David Jones ≈ 11,700 people
- Robert Jones ≈ 11,500 people
- William Jones ≈ 9,300 people
- Mary Jones ≈ 7,400 people
- Maria Jones ≈ 6,900 people
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.
Names about as common
The nearest entries above and below by number of people.
Who answers to it now
- White alone (non-Hispanic) — 53.1%
- Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 37.2%
- Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.3%
- Two or more races — 4.9%
- Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.6%
- American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%
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.
Try it Adult Height
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