The history of your name

The JOY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 12,741 2607 0.005 47
United States (1880 census) 3,725 1649 0.007 74
Change since 1880 +9016 -958 -0.002 -27
Other Countries
Australia 733 2213 0.004 45
United Kingdom 3,511 1782 0.008 76
Top States for JOY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,003 3015 0.003 30
New York 876 2064 0.005 46
Florida 717 2780 0.004 45
Texas 699 3173 0.003 34
Ohio 651 2057 0.006 57
Top States for JOY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 415 578 0.033 326
New Hampshire 192 979 0.016 155
Alaska 67 1117 0.011 107
Vermont 63 1687 0.010 103
Maryland 536 1089 0.010 101

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called JOY live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called JOY represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called JOY in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a JOY by picking someone at random in Maine than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of JOY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the JOY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the JOY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of JOY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 561 4.4
White (Hispanic) 243 1.91
Mixed Race 187 1.47
Native American/Alaskan 93 0.73
White (Caucasian) 10,553 82.83
Black/African American 1,103 8.66

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the JOY surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of JOY in historical publications

JOY. Probably from one of the several places in Normandy called Jouy ; or perhaps a contraction of Joyce.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to JOY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as JOY.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for JOY

The following words are slight variants of JOY that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.