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Girls' name · 566,307 recorded births

Janet

#2,778 in the US in 2025

Where Janet stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#2,778girls’ names · US 2025

Janet was the 2,778th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 61 births.

peak 1954 · 18,477188019532025

Its moment was 1954, when 18,477 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#2,778US rank, 2025 (girls)
61US births in 2025
#16its best US rank, in 1938
1954peak year — 18,477 births
556,776US births since 1880
7,971NZ births since 1900
45E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Janet's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Janet was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Janet in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0484967
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Janet in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 58% as a share of girls' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Janet in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Janet has been registered 7,971 times since 1900, peaking in 1954 with 273 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.06271255
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Janet in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Janet in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Janet was registered 45 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2023 with 11 births. It ranked #4,866 for girls in 2025 on 4 births. Across those years it has been falling.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.02.14.3
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Janet in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#29428
1890#28676
1900#326108
1910#216296
1920#1242,057
1930#534,602
1940#1910,105
1950#1816,193
1960#3214,250
1970#964,158
1980#1721,609
1990#2231,285
2000#412686
2010#889298
2020#2,00593

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Janet most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
New York47,963
California44,840
Pennsylvania42,597
Illinois36,669
Ohio36,519
Michigan29,164
Texas20,749
Massachusetts19,583
Indiana18,927
New Jersey18,254

Questions about Janet

How popular is the name Janet?

Janet ranked #2,778 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 61 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Janet most popular?

Janet peaked in 1954, when 18,477 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Janet rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Janet has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-58%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1954, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.