Juana
The story
Juana has been on the American books every single decade since the 1890s: 153 girls before 1900, and never once absent from the published record since. She is the feminine of Juan by way of the old Iohanna, "God is gracious," and she carries royal history: the source's own bearer is Juana the Mad, the sixteenth-century queen of Castile. The American line follows the century's Hispanic story: 846 in the 1910s, four-digit decades from the 1920s through the 2000s, 2,342 of them in the 1990s, then an easing, 1,167 in the 2010s and 1,082 so far this decade. Uruguay currently ranks her #25. Juanita, the diminutive, ran far bigger in midcentury America, 30,443 girls in the 1940s to Juana's 1,063, and has faded harder since, 876 in the 2010s to Juana's 1,167. Grace, in Spanish, with a hundred and thirty years of receipts.
Juana around the world
One shared root links 47 names across 10 languages.
Shared root: from Hebrew Yochanan "God is gracious", carried through Greek Ioannes and Latin Iohannes into nearly every European language
The constellation
37 more branches of this family
Juana in song
Juana la Cubana
Fito Olivares
Fito Olivares's biggest hit and a cumbia standard at Mexican family parties, later recorded by dozens of other groups.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Juana peaked in the 1900s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
3,113 people · the #3,785 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 66,667 · median age 42
Among people named Juana living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 128 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Juana
People given the name Juana in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1960 to 2009. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Juana deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Juana truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Juana fits with your family’s names and surname.
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