Entry № 4812 · English origin

Janet Janet — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ JAN-et /
Gender
Girl
Origin
English
Meaning
"God is gracious (Janet Jackson; Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Medieval (Scottish)

A name that means "god is gracious (janet jackson; janet yellen, us treasury secretary)".

Janet is a medieval Scottish diminutive of Jane — itself the feminine of John, from the Hebrew Yochanan ("God is gracious").

Subject of Janet Jackson's documentary Janet (2022).

God is gracious.

The name in its native script.

Janet
Transliteration
Janet
Pronunciation
/ ˈdʒæn.ɪt /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Janet stands.

Janet does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Janets before her.

Real people
Janet Yellen
78th US Secretary of the Treasury.
born 1946
Janet Jackson
American pop singer.
born 1966
Janet Reno
First female US Attorney General.
1938 – 2016
In fiction
Janet
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
1975

Names connected to Janet.

The number behind Janet.

5

The Seeker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Janet reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.