Jan

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Boy · Hebrew, through Dutch

Jan

Say it: YAHN

Try it with your surname

Meaning

Dutch form of Johannes, from Hebrew Yohanan 'Yahweh is gracious'.

Certainscholars agree on this meaning.

The commonest Dutch men's name for centuries.

Its wave through time

A fashion of the 1950s

In the United States

00.511.5218801900192019401960198020002020Girls 1956Boys 1944per 1,000 babies of that sex
  • 76,593 babies given this name since 1902
  • At its height in 1954, about 1 in 649 girls
  • 74 babies in 2020

Through the ages

  1. The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
  2. The Renaissance1400 to 1600
  3. The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
  4. Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
  5. The Modern Age1880 to today

Used by

DutchFlemishPolishCzechSlovak

The family of the name

Other spellings: Janek

FrenchJean
EnglishJohn
GermanJohann
CzechJan
SlovakJán
RussianIvan
SerbianJovan
LatinJohannes

Famous bearers

  • Jan van Eyck, painter
  • Jan Steen, painter
  • Jan Hus, Czech reformer

Names worth a look

Where this comes from

  • Parish baptism registers
  • Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
  • Royal and noble genealogies
  • National birth statistics of European countries source
  • United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source

Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.

Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.