Johns
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Johns is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: patronymic from John.
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 192◐
- USUnited States1 in 233
- NZNew Zealand1 in 236
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.4M ●
- #71 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 621 ●
- 1 in 233 ◐
across 11 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
15M records
Official registry-verified
United States
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Jones in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 22 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
patronymic from John. As a German name it may also be a reduced form of Johannes.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #4 | 1,425,470 | 13M rec. | 1 in 233 | 1.4M | Jones | 621 |
| GB United Kingdom | #2 | 1,213,581 | 976K rec. | — | — | Jones | 324 |
| AU Australia | #2 | 353,703 | 329K rec. | — | — | Jones | 314 |
| CA Canada | #5 | 328,444 | 230K rec. | — | 11 | Jones | 256 |
| IT Italy | #5 | 64,774 | 66K rec. | — | — | Jones | 118 |
| DE Germany | #102 | 47,855 | 48K rec. | — | listed | Jones | 173 |
| RU Russia | — | 35,537 | 37K rec. | — | — | Jones | 87 |
| NZ New Zealand | #2 | 31,957 | 27K rec. | — | — | Jones | 159 |
| SG Singapore | #7 | 26,351 | 27K rec. | — | — | Jones | 77 |
| EG Egypt | #79 | 23,155 | 23K rec. | — | — | Jones | 33 |
| CN China | #591 | 22,147 | 23K rec. | — | — | Jones | 62 |
| AT Austria | #42 | 4,905 | 4.8K rec. | — | 15 | Jones | 81 |
Roughly 1.4M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 233). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English470K84%
- Spanish16K3%
- 14K2%
- Welsh10K2%
- German5.4K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 469,609 | 84% |
| Spanish | 15,803 | 3% |
| 13,732 | 2% | |
| Welsh | 10,231 | 2% |
| German | 5,383 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Johns is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Americanized form of Swiss German Schantz.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An English surname originating as a patronymic derived from John.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of John’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, Patronym zu Johannes/John; im Großraum Hamburg sowie in den Räumen Husum und Braunschweig konzentriert.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, Patronym zu Rufname Johannes; 679 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1901 | 2 |
| 1921 | 1 |
| 1941 | 2 |
| 1951 | 6 |
| 1961 | 8 |
| 1971 | 4 |
| 1981 | 7 |
| 1991 | 11 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 8 years between 1901–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Mervyn Johnsb. 1899GBWelsh actor (1899–1992)
- Helen Johnsb. 1914USAmerican swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, former world record-holder (1914-2014)
- Glynis Johnsb. 1923GBBritish actress (1923–2024)
- Jasper Johnsb. 1930USAmerican painter and sculptor (1930)
- Glyn Johnsb. 1942GBEnglish musician, recording engineer and record producer
- Patty Murrayb. 1950USnot in their usual nameUnited States Senator from Washington since 2013
- Andy Johnsb. 1952GBBritish record producer and engineer (1950–2013)
- Andrew Johnsb. 1974AUAustralian rugby league footballer
- Daniel Johnsb. 1979AUAustralian musician
- Harris Johnsb. 2000DEGerman record producer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 40 sources across 22 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 187 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Johns?
- We estimate roughly 1.4 million people bear Johns (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Johns have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 1.4 million people bear Johns in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled jones.
- How common is Johns compared with other names?
- In the United States, Johns is the 4th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Johns mean?
- Recorded meaning: patronymic from John.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/johnsThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Johns” — the 4th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.