Joanne (given name)

Joanne (alternate spellings Joann, Jo Ann, Johann, Johanne, Jo-Ann, Jo-Anne) is a common given name for women, being a variant of Joanna. In Northern Ireland of 1975, "Joanne" was the most frequently used name for female newborns, though by the early years of the 21st century, the name had declined in popularity so that it could not be counted among the twenty most frequently used.[1]

Sometimes in modern English Joanne is reinterpreted as a compound of the two names Jo and Anne, and therefore given a spelling like JoAnne, Jo-Anne, or Jo Anne. However, the original name Joanna in ancient Greek and Latin is a single unit, not a compound. The names Hannah, Anna, Anne, Ann are etymologically related to Joanne just the same: they are derived from Hebrew חַנָּה Ḥannāh 'grace' from the same verbal root meaning "to be gracious".