Yoanna
Feminine · “God is gracious”
Luke's Gospel says something the others do not: that the movement had money, and that the money came from women. It names three of them, and one is Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward — a woman with access to a royal household, paying for a traveling preacher.
How old is the name Yoanna?
Yoanna first appears in US birth records in 1980 — 45 years ago. The typical Yoanna alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 700 people named Yoanna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Yoanna most popular?
Yoanna peaked in 2001, reaching #3864 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 7,053 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Yochanan to Yoanna
The story of Yoanna
The verse in Luke is brief and easy to read past. It lists women who traveled with the group and who supported them out of their own resources, and names Mary Magdalene, Susanna, and Joanna, who is identified by her husband's job — steward to Herod Antipas. Whatever else that means, it places one of the funders inside the court of the man who executed John the Baptist. The name went east with Greek Christianity and became ordinary in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and Russia. The spelling in American records depends entirely on the transliteration used at the border: the same Cyrillic letter is written Y by one convention and J by another, so one family becomes Yoanna and another Joanna.
Meaning
God is gracious
The feminine of John, from Hebrew Yochanan: God is gracious, or God has shown favor. Yoanna is the Bulgarian and Macedonian form, written Yoana or Joana depending on which transliteration system is used for the Cyrillic.
How the name formed
- Yochanan
- Ioanna
- Yoanna
Related forms: Yoana · Ioanna · Joanna · Juana
Pronouncing Yoanna
yo-AH-nah
Three syllables, stress in the middle, with a y at the front. Bulgarian stresses the second syllable and gives every vowel its full value. English readers often say yo-ANN-uh, which is close enough.
Nicknames for Yoanna
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
- 1980
- Most girls named
- 200737 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3864reached in 2001
- Change vs 2024
- +14.3%8 in 2025, from 7
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.
Yoanna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Yoana in Bulgarian — same name
- Ioanna in Greek — same name
- Joanna in Polish — same name
- Juana in Spanish — same name
Yoannas among us
people named Yoanna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Yoanna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Yoanna
- #10917
- Yoanna on the 2025 chart
- #939
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Yoanna went to 8 girls in 2025, but Yoana is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 21, which makes it the 939th most-given girls’ name of the year — 9,978 places above the chart.
- Yoana13
- Yoanna8
About 1 girl in 76,537 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 200,908 for Yoanna 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 Shama test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Yoanna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Shama climbed just as high around 1974, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Shama's path sketches the road Yoanna is walking now.
Yoanna 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
Yoanna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Yoanna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled Hebrew meaning shared with the largest name family in Europe.
- It is a current, ordinary name in Bulgaria and Macedonia rather than a coinage.
- Three open syllables with nothing hard in any of them.
- Joanna is far commoner in America and this spelling will be corrected toward it.
- The y and the j are the same Cyrillic letter, so even official documents can disagree.
- The doubled n is not standard in Bulgarian, so the name is slightly Americanized already.
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Yoanna
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Yoannas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Yoanna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Yoanna?
- Yoanna is one of 2 recorded spellings. Yoana is the more common one — 13 births in 2025 against 8 for Yoanna.
- How popular is the name Yoanna in 2025?
- Yoanna ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Yoanna?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Yoanna — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Yoanna with classmates?
- Yoanna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Yoanna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Yoanna? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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