January
The girl's name January has been in the national records since 1951, with 2,170 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 10,107th. About 2,100 Januarys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 45.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named January
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,170
- Estimated living today
- 2,100
- Median age today
- 45
- Peak year
- 1978
- Best rank
- 638th
- Rank in 2025
- 10,107th
- First recorded
- 1951
How old the living Januarys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,170 babies given the name since 1951, about 2,100 are alive — 96 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1980 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
Origin a month name, from English
From Middle English Januarie, januari, re-latinised forms of Middle English Janevere, Ieneuer, from Anglo-Norman genever, from Latin Iānuārius (“(month) of Janus”), a compound of with the first element perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European root *yeh₂- (“to go”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Januarys
- January Jones (born 1978)American actress
- January Suchodolski (1797–1875)Polish artist
People named January with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where January is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, January is most concentrated in California (1.9×), Ohio (1.8×), Florida (1.7×), Louisiana (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1978
The most popular girls’ names the year January peaked:
January elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland boys | January | 11 birth registrations | 588th |
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.
Related names
January 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.