The most used girls' names beginning with J in 2025

J is the sharpest split in the alphabet, and the girls' side is the quiet one. Not a single girls' name beginning with J appears in the ONS top 100 for England and Wales in 2025. The letter still covers 4,601 babies across 230 spellings, but its leader, Jasmine, sits at rank 102 with 455 registrations, just outside the published cohort.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
102	Jasmine	455	Persian yasamin, the flower, through Arabic and French
139	Jessica	360	First recorded in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, probably from the Hebrew name Iscah
244	Julia	190	Roman family name Julius, of uncertain meaning; downward-facing or descended from Jupiter are both argued
250	Josie	186	English pet form of Josephine, from Joseph, Hebrew, he will add
250	Juniper	186	English plant name from Latin juniperus
256	Josephine	182	French feminine of Joseph, Hebrew Yosef, he will add
268	Jannat	171	Arabic jannat, gardens, the plural used in the Quran for paradise
381	Joni	111	English pet form of Joan, from John, God is gracious
400	Juno	104	The Roman queen of the gods; the etymology is uncertain and probably pre-Latin
403	Jessie	101	Scots pet form of Janet, and separately a short form of Jessica
444	Jemima	90	Hebrew, read as dove; a daughter of Job
473	Jannah	84	Arabic jannah, garden, used in the Quran for paradise

The most used boys' names beginning with J in 2025

For boys the same letter is the fifth largest in the country: 18,905 babies across 325 names, with nine inside the top 100. Almost all of the leaders are biblical, and several are different routes to the same Hebrew root. Jacob and James both descend from Yaaqov, and Jude, Joshua and Joseph are the other pillars of the letter.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
14	Jude	2,153	English form of Judas and Judah, Hebrew Yehudah, praised
24	Jack	1,595	Medieval English pet form of John, God is gracious; a link to French Jacques is now discounted
41	Jacob	1,258	Hebrew Yaaqov, read as holder of the heel or supplanter
42	James	1,211	Latin Iacomus, a late form of Jacob, Hebrew Yaaqov
51	Jesse	980	Hebrew Yishai, of uncertain meaning; the father of King David
53	Joshua	938	Hebrew Yehoshua, Yahweh is salvation
59	Joseph	811	Hebrew Yosef, he will add
63	Jasper	802	Probably from a Persian word for treasurer, through the medieval magi legend
88	Jaxon	605	A modern respelling of Jackson, the English surname meaning son of Jack
124	Jayden	406	A modern American coinage of the 1990s; no older etymology, despite Hebrew glosses offered online
138	Jackson	372	English surname, son of Jack
140	Jenson	371	Scandinavian surname, son of Jens, that is John

Which J names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

All the published movement for J is on the boys' side. Jasper gained 8 places to 63rd and is up 41 since 2015, and Jesse gained 3 places and is up 60 places over ten years, the letter's strongest long-run climb. Jude is 47 places higher than it was in 2015. Nothing on the girls' side has a published change figure at all, because nothing on the girls' side is in the top 100.

Slipping

Jaxon fell 22 places in 2025, the largest single-year fall anywhere in the boys' top 100. Jacob lost 11, and James, Jack, Joshua and Joseph each lost 2 or 3. The ten-year column is harsher: Joseph is down 38 places since 2015, Joshua 37, Jacob 36 and James 31. The classic J names for boys are all still large and all still shrinking.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

Because no J girls' name reaches the top 100, the ONS publishes no rank change for any of them. Jasmine, Jessica, Julia, Josie, Juniper and Josephine have exact 2025 counts and nothing else. On the boys' side Jayden, Jackson, Jenson, Jax and Jonah are all below the line too. This page therefore describes girls' J names only by count and rank, never by direction.

How big a letter J really is

The asymmetry is the letter's defining fact: 18,905 boys against 4,601 girls, a ratio of about four to one. J is fifth among boys' letters and seventeenth among girls'. P is the only letter that leans as far the other way, and it leans towards girls. If you are looking for a J name for a daughter, you are looking in a much emptier part of the register than the letter's reputation suggests.

The girls' J list is also unusually old-fashioned in a specific way. Jessica at 360 and Jessie at 101 are both now well outside the top 100, and Joanna, Joy and Jemima sit below 100 babies each. The clearest growth is in names with no English tradition behind them, such as Jannat at 171 and Jannah at 84, and in nature and word names like Juniper and Juno.

Further J names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Joanna at 78, Joy at 73, Juliette at 62, Janelle at 60, Jennifer at 59, Jind at 59, Juliet at 57, Jana at 54, Jiya at 53, June at 53, Jade at 49, Joanie at 37. For boys they are Jax at 366, Jonah at 363, Joey at 324, John at 296, Jason at 270, Jaxson at 226, Joel at 223, Josiah at 220, Jake at 213, Jamie at 195, Jordan at 189, Jensen at 170. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 230 different girls' names and 325 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a J name: what the data changes

For a boy, J offers the best-documented names in the whole list and the most competition; a class of thirty is likely to hold a Jack, a James or a Jude. For a girl the opposite applies, and unusually the data supports it: a J name for a daughter in England and Wales in 2025 was, by the ONS ranking, an uncommon choice whichever name you picked.

Baby names starting with J: girls and boys