Jolene
- Pronunciation
- [Jo-lene]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- A Well-Established Compound Of Jo-
- Origin
- English
About the Name Jolene
Jolene is a modern American invented name, formed as a creative blend of Jo (the casual diminutive of Joseph, Joanna, Josephine — see separate entries) and the popular -lene suffix. The name appears in American naming records starting in the 1940s and is essentially a 20th-century American invention.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the iconic 1973 Dolly Parton song Jolene — the iconic American country song about a beautiful woman named Jolene who threatens to take the singer's man. The song became one of Dolly Parton's foundational hits and one of the most-iconic American country songs of the 20th century. The Beyoncé 2024 cover of Jolene on her iconic Cowboy Carter album anchored the Jolene name in 2020s American cultural memory.
Notable contemporary bearers include American actress Jolene Blalock (born 1975, the American actress of UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise 2001–2005); the contemporary fictional Jolene of various contemporary novels; and various contemporary American influencers. Jolene held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1947 through 1970 — about a quarter century of mid-20th-century American popularity. After a long quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Hattie, Sadie, and Maisie. Jolene climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Joseph-Joanna combined-form pedigree, the strong Dolly Parton song cultural anchor and Beyoncé contemporary anchor, and the popular two-syllable -ene ending family (Jolene, Charlene, Marlene, Darlene). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. The name reads as both classical-vintage and distinctly contemporary American. Common nicknames Jo (the dominant warm short form, gender-neutral and casual), Jolie, and the rare Lene each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Jolene, Joelene, and Jolyne have their own SSA tracking. International variants are minimal since the name is essentially modern American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jolene
US Popularity History (2010–2025)
Annual US births named Jolene by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2019 with 693 girls named Jolene (girl rank #450 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #666 for girls (423 US births). That's 216 places below its 2019 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.
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Where in the US Is Jolene 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 Jolene the strongest states are West Virginia, Idaho, Ohio.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #227 | 40 |
| 2 | Idaho | #293 | 35 |
| 3 | Ohio | #348 | 307 |
| 4 | Missouri | #381 | 166 |
| 5 | Indiana | #389 | 184 |
| 6 | California | #393 | 854 |
| 7 | Michigan | #418 | 207 |
| 8 | Pennsylvania | #428 | 242 |
| 9 | Oregon | #436 | 82 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #458 | 34 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #818 | 103 |
| 2 | South Carolina | #719 | 43 |
| 3 | Maryland | #699 | 66 |
| 4 | Alabama | #687 | 35 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #686 | 132 |
| 6 | New York | #685 | 231 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #663 | 114 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #650 | 65 |
| 9 | Utah | #619 | 27 |
| 10 | Arizona | #612 | 103 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jolene in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joleen | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
| Jolena | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
| Jolina | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
| Joline | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
| Jolleen | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
| Jollene | A Well-Established Compound Of Jo- | Female | English |
Looking for names like Jolene?
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 Jolene to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jolene against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).