Jonah
Jonah is a boy's name that peaked in 2008, when it was the 136th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 128th. About 84,000 Jonahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jonah boys named Jonah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 86,075
- Estimated living today
- 84,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2008
- Best rank
- 136th
- Rank in 2025
- 128th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 792 / 85,283
How old the living Jonahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 86,075 babies given the name since 1880, about 84,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 51,000 of them are children and 370 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 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 Hebrew
From the Hebrew יוֹנָה (“dove”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jonahs
- Jonah Hill (born 1983)American actor
- Jonah Lomu (1975–2015)New Zealand rugby union player
- Jonah Hauer-King (born 1995)British actor
- Jonah Bobo (born 1997)American actor
- Jonah Falcon (born 1970)American actor and writer
- Jonah of Moscow (1390–1461)Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus', 1448-1461
- Jonah Goldberg (born 1969)American political writer and pundit
- Jonah Bolden (born 1996)Australian basketball player
People named Jonah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jonah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jonah is most concentrated in Hawaii (4.0×), Alaska (2.2×), Utah (1.9×), Nevada (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2008
The most popular boys’ names the year Jonah peaked:
Jonah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Jonah | 7,630 | 133rd |
| France boys | Jonah | 2,080 | 404th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jonah | 796 | 23rd |
| Switzerland boys | Jonah | 762 | 135th |
| Ireland boys | Jonah | 583 | 135th |
| Belgium boys | Jonah | 553 | 403rd |
| Norway boys | Jonah | 457 | 177th |
| Scotland boys | Jonah | 398 | 138th |
| France girls | Jonah | 15 | 6,522nd |
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.
Jonah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Jonah | 640 | 0.051% | 106th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Jonah | 111 | 0.026% | 220th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Jonah | 11 | 0.017% | 88th |
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, Jonah is most concentrated in Basel-Landschaft, where 0.08% of children were given it – 44 of them.
Jonah: rank by region
In 2025, Jonah was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jonah | 806 | 6 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jonah appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (97th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – 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.
Jonah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 365 | 48th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Jonah 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 | Jonah | 96 | 119 |
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.
Related names
Jonah 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.