Jona
Feminine · “dove”
Jona is given to both — 1,751 girls and 526 boys since 1880. See Jona as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Jonah is a dove. The Hebrew yonah is the ordinary word for the bird, and it belongs to the man who is swallowed by a fish for refusing an errand — a story that is genuinely funny in places and ends with God pointing out that the city he was sent to save contains a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. Jona is the German spelling, and an Albanian name besides.
How old is the name Jona?
Jona first appears in US birth records in 1933 — 92 years ago. The typical Jona alive today was born around 1977, making them about 48 years old. About 1,600 people named Jona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jona most popular?
Jona peaked in 1964, reaching #1497 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 11,711 places below that high. See the whole 1964 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Yonah to Jona
The story of Jona
The book of Jonah is unlike the rest of the prophetic books: it is a story rather than a collection of oracles, it is short, and its point is that the prophet is wrong. He runs from his assignment, is thrown overboard, is swallowed, relents, preaches, and then sulks when the city repents and is spared. German kept the name as Jona; Albanian has a separate Jona used for daughters. American records carry the spelling in small numbers and give it to both sexes, leaning to boys.
Meaning
dove
From the Hebrew yonah, a dove or pigeon. It is one of the plainest names in the Hebrew Bible — an ordinary bird, with none of the symbolic weight the dove picked up later. That weight came from the flood story and from the Gospels, not from the prophet.
How the name formed
- Yonah
- Ionas
- Jona
Related forms: Jona · Yonah · Jonás · Giona · Yunus
Pronouncing Jona
YOH-nah
Two syllables, stress on the first, in German, where the j is a y. Americans say JOH-nuh with a soft j, which is how the name is generally heard here. Both are current in families that use the spelling.
Nicknames for Jona
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1933
- Most girls named
- 196354 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1497reached in 1964
- Change vs 2023
- −68.4%6 in 2025, from 19
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Jona in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Jona in German — same name
- Yonah in Hebrew — transliteration
- Jonás in Spanish — same name
- Giona in Italian — same name
- Yunus in Arabic — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Jonas among us
people named Jona are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Jona
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jona
- #13208
- Jona on the 2025 chart
- #904
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jona went to 6 girls in 2025, but Jonah and Jonna are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 56, which makes it the 904th most-given girls’ name of the year — 12,304 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 28,701 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 267,878 for Jona itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Tanis test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jona's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tanis climbed just as high around 1948, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tanis's path sketches the road Jona is walking now.
Jona sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Jona beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jona in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four letters and two open syllables — it fits any form and any accent.
- The story behind it is unusually vivid and takes one sentence to summarize.
- It is standard in German and used in Albanian, so it is a real name rather than a shortening.
- It works for a child of either sex, and the record shows it doing so.
- Jonah is the standard English spelling and will be written instead.
- The j is a y in German and a soft j in America, so relatives may not agree.
- It leans to boys without settling there, so forms and rosters will guess.
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What they receive
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Jona
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jonas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,600 people named Jona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jona?
- Jona is one of 3 recorded spellings. Jonah is the more common one — 39 births in 2025 against 6 for Jona.
- How popular is the name Jona in 2025?
- Jona ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jona?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Jona — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jona with classmates?
- Jona will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jona
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jona? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jona and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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