Janet
- Pronunciation
- [Ja-net]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Gift From God
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Janet
Janet is a medieval diminutive of Jane, which is the feminine form of John — from the Hebrew Yohanan, meaning "God is gracious" or "gift from God." Janet developed as an independent Scottish and northern English form and was already well established as a given name in its own right by the Tudor period. Its combination of scriptural depth and friendly diminutive energy gave it wide appeal across social classes and religious traditions throughout the English-speaking world.
Among the name's distinguished bearers is Dame Janet Lane-Claypon, an English physician, epidemiologist, and pioneer of cohort and case-control study methods whose 1912 and 1926 reports established research designs that became foundational to modern epidemiology — a remarkable scientific legacy that makes her an often-overlooked giant of twentieth-century medicine.
Janet first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1928 and surged to a peak of #16 in 1938, placing it among the top women's names of the Depression era. Its sustained chart presence is notable: the name remained in the top-1000 all the way to 2011, when it ranked #953 — an 83-year run that reflects both the name's broad generational reach and its resistance to rapid obsolescence. The recorded variant is Jennet.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Janet
US Popularity History (1928–2011)
Annual US births named Janet by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1954 with 18,477 girls named Janet (girl rank #19 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2011, ranked #953 for girls (269 US births). That's 934 places below its 1954 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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Famous People Named Janet
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Janet.
- Janet Lane-Claypon was a well-known physician and scientist, pioneer of epidemiology and cohort study.
Looking for names like Janet?
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 Janet to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Janet against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).