Janis
About 49,015 American babies have been named Janis since 1909, most of them around 1947. In 2025 it ranked 9,457th. About 34,000 Janises are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 72.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Janis boys named Janis
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 49,015
- Estimated living today
- 34,000
- Median age today
- 72
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 108th
- Rank in 2025
- 9,457th
- First recorded
- 1909
- Girls / boys
- 48,841 / 174
How old the living Janises are
born that year still alive today
Of the 49,015 babies given the name since 1909, about 34,000 are alive — 69 in every hundred. Roughly 380 of them are children and 26,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1953 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
A variant of Janice.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Janiss
- Janis Joplin (1943–1970)American singer
- Jānis Čakste (1859–1927)1st president of Latvia
- Jānis Lūsis (1939–2020)Latvian javelin thrower
- Jānis Pujats (born 1930)Catholic cardinal of Latvian origin
- Janis Paige (1922–2024)American actress
- Janis Ian (born 1951)American singer-songwriter
- Jānis Krūmiņš (1930–1994)Soviet basketball player
- Jānis Timma (1992–2024)Latvian basketball player
People named Janis with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Janis is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Janis is most concentrated in Iowa (1.9×), Kansas (1.7×), Arkansas (1.6×), Washington (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular girls’ names the year Janis peaked:
Janis elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland boys | Janis | 2,757 | 27th |
| France girls | Janis | 885 | 843rd |
| France boys | Janis | 500 | 1,099th |
| Norway boys | Janis | 338 | 218th |
| Scotland girls | Janis | 68 | 276th |
| Belgium boys | Janis | 53 | 843rd |
| Ireland girls | Janis | 37 | 306th |
| England and Wales boys | Janis | 27 | 2,458th |
| Belgium girls | Janis | 20 | 847th |
| England and Wales girls | Janis | 14 | 4,524th |
| Ireland boys | Janis | 9 | 701st |
| Poland boys | Janis +1 spelling | 4 birth registrations | 598th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Janis: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Janis | 2,731 | 0.219% | 18th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Janis | 14 | 0.003% | 525th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Janis | 8 | 0.012% | 128th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Janis | 4 | 0.108% | 4th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Janis is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.29% of children were given it – 263 of them.
Janis: rank by region
In 2005, Janis was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Janis | 792 | 5 |
In 2018, Janis was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Janis | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Janis by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 7 | 519th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Janis among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Janis | 18 | 22 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Janis lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 201 women called Janis were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gipuzkoa | Janis | 18 | 0.048 | 1,268 |
| Girona | Janis | 8 | 0.019 | 2,370 |
| Bizkaia | Janis | 10 | 0.017 | 2,306 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Janis | 17 | 0.017 | 2,838 |
| Almería | Janis | 5 | 0.013 | 3,025 |
| Asturias | Janis | 7 | 0.013 | 2,498 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Janis against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.