Jean
A feminine form of John, of French origin meaning "God is gracious".
Name Census estimates that about 168,190 living Americans carry the first name Jean. It is a predominantly female name (94.9% of registrations). The average person named Jean today is around 68 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Jean births was 1927 (12,775 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Jean. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Jean with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • The typical person named Jean is about 68 years old today, placing it firmly among the names of earlier generations. Most living Jeans were born before 1968.
- • Compared to the 1920s, recent registration numbers for Jean have dropped to less than 5% of what they once were.
People living today
168K
~ 1 in 2,038 Americans
Peak year
1927
12,775 babies that year
Average age
68
years old
2024 SSA rank
#1,139
Tracked since 1880
Census
Jean in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 270,224 people with the first name Jean, which placed it at #198 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#198
National first-name rank
People counted
270K
270,224 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
89.5
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
76.7% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Jean
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jean is White at 76.7%. The next largest groups are Black (13.3%) and Hispanic (4.9%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Jean described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Jean at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White76.7% · 207,183
- Black or African American13.3% · 35,840
- Hispanic or Latino4.9% · 13,313
- Asian and Pacific Islander3.4% · 9,236
- Two or more races1.4% · 3,778
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.3% · 874
Gender
Gender distribution for Jean
Jean leans heavily female at 94.9% of total registrations, but 24,863 boys have also been registered with the name over the years, giving it a small but present crossover presence.
Jean as a male name
- Ranked #1,139 in 2024
- 184 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1993 (428 births)
Jean as a female name
- Ranked #2,411 in 2024
- 75 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1927 (12,512 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jean leans strongly female. 228,208 people counted with this name were female (84.4%), compared with 42,023 male bearers (15.6%).
Popularity
Jean: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Jean from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1920s, with 108,977 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1920s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Jean by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Jean during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
| Decade | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 152 | 1,000 | 1,152 |
| 1890s | 185 | 2,396 | 2,581 |
| 1900s | 267 | 5,931 | 6,198 |
| 1910s | 1,352 | 39,284 | 40,636 |
| 1920s | 2,978 | 105,999 | 108,977 |
| 1930s | 2,049 | 94,189 | 96,238 |
| 1940s | 1,573 | 80,364 | 81,937 |
| 1950s | 1,517 | 72,263 | 73,780 |
| 1960s | 1,829 | 37,281 | 39,110 |
| 1970s | 2,228 | 11,027 | 13,255 |
| 1980s | 2,618 | 4,858 | 7,476 |
| 1990s | 2,968 | 1,849 | 4,817 |
| 2000s | 2,617 | 829 | 3,446 |
| 2010s | 1,829 | 707 | 2,536 |
| 2020s | 701 | 373 | 1,074 |
Geography
Where Jeans live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois recorded the most babies named Jean, while Nevada, Alaska, Wyoming recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 9,115 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Jean
The name Jean has its origins in the Hebrew name Yohanan, meaning "Graced by God" or "Yahweh is gracious". It emerged from the French form of the Latin name Johannes, which is derived from the Greek Ioannes. The name spread throughout Europe during the Christian era.
Jean is a common French name for both males and females. It was one of the most popular names in France during the Middle Ages. The name gained widespread use after John the Baptist and John the Apostle, two important figures in the New Testament of the Bible.
One of the earliest recorded instances of the name Jean is found in the 12th century French epic poem "The Song of Roland", where it is used as a name for a character. In the 13th century, Jean de Meung was a famous French poet and scholar who co-authored the influential work "Roman de la Rose".
Jean Froissart (c. 1337-1405) was a renowned French chronicler and poet who documented the events of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Jean Calvin (1509-1564), a French theologian and pastor, was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation and the development of Calvinism.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière (1622-1673), was a highly influential French playwright and actor who is regarded as one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer, made significant contributions to the fields of political philosophy, education, and music.
Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) was a prominent figure in the French Revolution and a radical voice in the Jacobin group. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was a French naturalist who proposed one of the first theories of evolution, known as Lamarckism.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Jean
People
Jean + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Jean as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with J
Other first names starting with J with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Jean: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Jean?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 168,190 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Jean going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 2,038 US residents.
Is Jean a common name?
We classify Jean as "Common". It ranks above 99.7% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 483,213 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Jean most popular?
The single biggest year for Jean was 1927, when 12,775 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Jean is about 68 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Jean in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 270,224 people with the name Jean, or 89.47 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #198 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Jean in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Jean?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jean leans strongly female. 228,208 people counted with this name were female (84.4%), compared with 42,023 male bearers (15.6%). The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Jean?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jean is White at 76.7%. The next largest groups are Black (13.3%) and Hispanic (4.9%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Jean most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Jean in the 2020 Census, accounting for 76.7% (207,183 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Jean in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Jean a female name?
Yes, 94.9% of people registered as Jean in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Jean still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Jean in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Jean can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How common is the name Jean?
For a faster, more casual read, check HowManyOfMe.org — our sister site built around that single question.