Joy

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Joy is a given name, most frequently recorded in the Philippines, where it is the 13th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: English word name from joy, ultimately Latin gaudia 'rejoicing'.

rarermore common
  • PHPhilippines1 in 347◐
  • NGNigeria1 in 885
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 1.3K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈130K ●

across 9 countries

Sources
503 ●

2.4M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1K ◐

Guyana

Meaning & origin●

English word name from joy, ultimately Latin gaudia 'rejoicing'.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Joy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PH Philippines#13481,403407K rec.——Joy168
US United States#305115,8021.5M rec.1 in 2.9K116KJoy503
GB United Kingdom#32194,03595K rec.——Joy207
AU Australia#25084,76885K rec.—80Joy221
NG Nigeria#5782,329114K rec.——Joy134
CA Canada#34736,15137K rec.—10Joy195
NL Netherlands#69223,2613.9K rec.—2.7KJoy104
IN India—14,68315K rec.—19KJoy172
IT Italy#59210,20311K rec.——Joy85
FR France—8,980△26 rec.1 in 7.6K9K—10
NZ New Zealand#1066,4346.3K rec.——Joy102
EG Egypt—3,4973.3K rec.——Joy40

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English2.4M70%
  • Spanish292K9%
  • Swahili116K3%
  • 108K3%
  • Hindi90K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English2,382,34970%
Spanish291,9399%
Swahili115,9553%
107,8683%
Hindi90,3323%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Joy is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name372K records spelled Joy25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, United States, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Jöy, Jöÿ, Jôy, Joÿ, Jộy

  • Hindi given name158K records spelled Joy7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Philippines, Nigeria

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Jōÿ, Jóý, Joÿ, Jôy

  • Hindi given name133K records spelled Joy142 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Australia, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, English, Bangla

    Also written Jai, Jay, জয়, Jaei, Jaye

  • Indonesian given name64K records spelled Joy3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, India

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Joy

99 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Joy 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.

  • In English, from the female name Joia or the common noun joy; first attested Manser filius Joie 1186 P (Lancashire)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, A feeling of extreme happiness or cheerfulness, especially related to the acquisition or expectation of something good.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Swedish, Joy är ett engelskt namn som betyder ’glädje, lycka’.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In French, Origine anglaise, signifie « joie ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In English, kohtine; great joy, kohune wa

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

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●

01K2K3K1900195020002.9K · 1957

Show as table
Joy in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1883–2025
Yearrecords
18835
18859
18866
18877
188810
188920
189010
189114
189216
189310
189421
189524
189618
189730
189820
189923
190027
190125
190238
190330
190436
190538
190640
190738
190838
190954
191048
191163
191268
1913120
1914158
1915190
1916214
1917256
1918303
1919322
1920376
1921392
1922447
1923540
1924578
1925772
1926892
19271,127
19281,091
19291,138
19301,268
19311,224
19321,361
19331,291
19341,342
19351,349
19361,483
19371,236
19381,372
19391,259
19401,310
19411,550
19421,592
19431,610
19441,456
19451,389
19461,573
19471,815
19481,627
19491,642
19501,775
19512,012
19522,276
19532,307
19542,367
19552,389
19562,819
19572,929
19582,764
19592,880
19602,776
19612,609
19622,426
19632,181
19642,219
19651,975
19662,090
19671,885
19681,904
19691,691
19701,773
19711,826
19721,817
19731,697
19742,757
19752,306
19762,076
19772,100
19781,946
19791,821
19801,717
19811,622
19821,335
19831,191
19841,155
19851,123
19861,036
1987862
1988837
1989802
1990697
1991710
1992616
1993632
1994589
1995593
1996587
1997580
1998583
1999596
2000607
2001580
2002590
2003583
2004615
2005584
2006608
2007604
2008575
2009587
2010632
2011585
2012622
2013653
2014699
2015734
2016954
2017968
2018902
2019918
2020788
2021779
2022688
2023683
2024707
2025747

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 142 years between 1883–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Roxanne Seeman, b. 1954Fran Drescher, b. 1957Lisa Randall, b. 1962Tracee Ellis Ross, b. 1972Chelsea Handler, b. 1975Kristen Schaal, b. 1978Bethany Joy Galeotti, b. 1981Gina Carano, b. 1982Da'Vine Joy Randolph, b. 1986Amanda Michalka, b. 1991

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 104 sources across 56 countries.

Official registers attesting Joy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020116K#482
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—19K#647
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202014K#2,532
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201013K#2,684
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200013K#2,607
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20249K#85
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—2.7K#1,144
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.7K#1,158
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.7K#482
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—787#1,790
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—764#3,449
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—748#1,671

Reference works 7

  • 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
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 1,209 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Joy?
We estimate roughly 130 thousand people bear Joy (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Joy have the most bearers?
Joy is most frequently recorded in the Philippines, where it is most often spelled joy.
How common is Joy compared with other names?
In the Philippines, Joy is the 13th most common given name of 462,140 given names recorded there.
Is Joy a male or female name?
Joy is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Joy mean?
Recorded meaning: English word name from joy, ultimately Latin gaudia 'rejoicing'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/joy

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Joy” — the 13th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Joy parses inside a full name →