Humanverse

Jane vs Jannet

American parents have registered 381,009 Janes since 1880, against 2,319 Jannets. Jane is still ahead, with 1,380 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jane against Jannet, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jane Jannet

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

Jane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1992, when Jane had 657 and Jannet had 74.

Side by side

  Jane Jannet
Total US births 381,0092,319
Most in one year 9,96184
Babies in 2025 1,380under 5
Estimated living today 207,0002,100
Median age today 6934
Peak year 19471990
Best rank 36th girls1,733rd girls
Rank in 2025 221stunranked
First recorded 18801921
Girls / boys 379,876 / 1,1332,319 / 0

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 Janes alive today are over 69; half the Jannets are over 34. That is 35 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 Jane Jannet
France 8,58565
Ireland 4,8053
England and Wales 1,24410

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: Jane and Jannet.