Joanna: Meaning of Baby Name Joanna

About the Name Joanna

Joanna descends through Late Latin Joanna from the Greek Iōanna, ultimately from the Hebrew Yochanah meaning "Yahweh is gracious" or "God has shown favor" — the feminine form of the same Hebrew root that produces the masculine John (see separate entry on John for the broader etymology).

The name's New Testament anchor is Joanna (Greek Iōanna) mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (8:3 and 24:10) — one of the women who supported Jesus's ministry financially and one of the witnesses to the empty tomb on Easter morning. Joanna has been continuously used across Christian-influenced naming traditions for nearly two thousand years.

Notable bearers include British politician and Archbishop's wife Joanna of Toledo, American actress Joanna Gaines (born 1978, the iconic HGTV designer and Magnolia Network co-founder whose home-renovation work made her one of the major American lifestyle figures of the 2010s and 2020s), and contemporary actress Joanna Lumley. Joanna's American climb has been steady: the name climbed into the US top 200 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. The name's appeal is its layered biblical-classical pedigree combined with three flowing syllables. The name reads as both classical-religious and contemporary American with the strong Joanna Gaines lifestyle-and-design register. Common nicknames Jo (gender-neutral, vintage-trendy), Joey, Anna (back-end shortening), and the rare Hannah (back-end shortening) each carry distinct registers; international forms include Joanna (Italian/Spanish/Polish, identical), Joana (Portuguese), Jeanne (French), Johanna (German), and the broader John/Yochanan family.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Joanna

1,531

Hebrew baby names in our dictionary

836

Hebrew female names

275

6-letter J-names in our dictionary

525

J-female names total

1984–2025

years of US SSA records (28 total)

36,616

total US births named Joanna (all years)

US Popularity History (1984–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Joanna dropped 50 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#256 in 2020 → #306 in 2025).

Annual US births named Joanna by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1984 with 3,332 girls named Joanna (girl rank #88 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #306 for girls (997 US births). That's 218 places below its 1984 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.

Where in the US Is Joanna 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 Joanna the strongest states are Alaska, Hawaii, Ohio.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Alaska	#155	22
2	Hawaii	#167	25
3	Ohio	#205	507
4	South Dakota	#208	17
5	New Hampshire	#223	16
6	Indiana	#227	292
7	Iowa	#230	149
8	District of Columbia	#235	16
9	Pennsylvania	#239	444
10	Washington	#239	278

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Louisiana	#495	100
2	Utah	#440	93
3	New Jersey	#427	192
4	Nevada	#407	54
5	Florida	#387	437
6	Arizona	#381	177
7	Mississippi	#362	85
8	Connecticut	#359	76
9	Oklahoma	#345	124
10	Colorado	#338	154

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Joanna in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Jana	God's Gift	Female	Czechoslovakian
Jo	Abbreviation Of Names Like Joanna And Josephine. Also Used As A Prefix In Compound Names Like Jobeth And Jolisa.	Female	English
Joanna	Gift From God	Female	Hebrew

Looking for names like Joanna?

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Compare Joanna to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Joanna against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Joanna vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Joanna vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Joanna vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Joanna vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Joanna vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Joanna vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Joanna vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Joanna vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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