Jillian
- Pronunciation
- [Ji-lli-an]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Jove's Child. Variant Of Gillian From The Masculine Julian.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Jillian
Jillian is a variant of Gillian, the English feminine form of the Latin Julianus, itself derived from the Roman family name Julius. The traditional meaning attached to the Julian line is "Jove's child" or "descended from Jupiter," rooted in the belief that the Julii clan traced its lineage to the god Julus — though this is mythological genealogy rather than linguistic etymology. The Old French form Gilian gave rise to both Gillian and, through a variant spelling tradition, Jillian. The double-l spelling distinguishes Jillian from Gillian in modern American usage and gives the name a slightly fresher visual profile while preserving the same classical foundation.
Jillian occupies an interesting mid-century-to-modern bridge: it sounds contemporary enough for late-twentieth-century naming tastes yet carries the quiet authority of a name with genuine Latin roots. Its compact rhythm — three syllables with stress on the first — places it alongside similarly structured names like Julian, Vivian, and Lillian that have enjoyed sustained cross-generational appeal. The name is overwhelmingly given to girls, belonging to the same extended family as Jill, Jilly, and the diminutive Gilly.
Jillian first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1982, the same year it peaked at #96 — a strong debut that confirmed immediate mainstream appeal. It accumulated 37,667 top-1000 births over its tracked period and remained in the charts through 2020, when it ranked #956 with 267 births. Recorded nicknames and variants include Gilly, Jill, Jillie, and Jilly.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jillian
US Popularity History (1982–2020)
Annual US births named Jillian by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1982 with 3,056 girls named Jillian (girl rank #96 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #956 for girls (267 US births). That's 860 places below its 1982 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Jillian Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Jillian the strongest states are Connecticut, Louisiana, Missouri.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connecticut | #394 | 41 |
| 2 | Louisiana | #534 | 56 |
| 3 | Missouri | #573 | 81 |
| 4 | Michigan | #577 | 116 |
| 5 | Kansas | #595 | 27 |
| 6 | Oregon | #613 | 23 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #630 | 35 |
| 8 | Ohio | #638 | 140 |
| 9 | Massachusetts | #641 | 76 |
| 10 | Washington | #643 | 47 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jillian in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Jillian?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Jillian to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jillian against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).