Humanverse

Jan vs Janine

American parents have registered 76,934 Jans since 1880, against 33,519 Janines. Jan is still ahead, with 52 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jan against Janine, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jan Janine

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 119 years in which either name was published, Jan for 84 years and Janine for 35 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Jan Janine
Total US births 76,93433,519
Most in one year 3,7611,380
Babies in 2025 5221
Estimated living today 57,00030,000
Median age today 6757
Peak year 19561960
Best rank 136th girls231st girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd5,722nd
First recorded 19021914
Girls / boys 54,531 / 22,40333,508 / 11

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Jans alive today are over 67; half the Janines are over 57. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jan Janine
France 1,71568,630
Austria 5,4611,209
Switzerland 5,543749
New Zealand 1,5872,641
England and Wales 3,177178
Scotland 647423
Ireland 746242
Northern Ireland 825

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jan and Janine.