Is Joan a male or female name?
Joan is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 98% and male usage in Spain at 99%. Country context changes the answer.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- female
- Probability
- 88%
- Sample size
- 555,567
- Confidence
- high
Joan by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States US | female | 98% | 488,465 | ssa |
| Spain ES | male | 99% | 53,377 | ine |
| France FR | male | 86% | 8,370 | insee |
| Ireland IE | female | 100% | 3,080 | cso |
| Switzerland CH | male | 71% | 925 | bfs |
| England and Wales GB | female | 99% | 590 | ons |
| Canada CA | female | 94% | 378 | statcan |
| Poland PL | female | 54% | 184 | pesel |
| Norway NO | female | 100% | 131 | ssb |
| Austria AT | male | 63% | 67 | statat |
Attested in 65 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AG · AT · AU · BB · BD · BE · BI · BW · BZ · CA · CB · CH · CM · CY · DK · DM · ER · ES · FJ · FR · GB · GD · GH · GY · IE · IN · JM · KE · KI · KN · LC · LR · LS · ME · MH · MT · MU · MW · NA · NG · NO · NR · NZ · PG · PH · PL · PW · RS · RW · SB · SC · SE · SL · SZ · TO · TT · TV · UG · US · VC · VU · WS · ZA · ZM · ZW
Look up Joan with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Joan&country=US" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Joan
Is Joan a male or female name?
Joan is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 98% and male usage in Spain at 99%. Country context changes the answer.
Why can the result for Joan change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Joan identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.