Why is National Jane Day on June 13?

The European name-day calendars give June 13 to Anthony and to a scattering of unrelated names, and not one of them lists a Jane; her own traditional name days fall on 21 July in Norway and 3 May in Sweden. No source explains why June 13 was used for her instead.

Is National Jane Day the same as Jane Goodall Day?

No. Jane Goodall Day is a separate observance on April 3, announced by the Jane Goodall Institute's global network of chapters in March 2026 for what would have been her 92nd birthday.

What does the name Jane mean and where does it come from?

Jane is the medieval English form of the Old French Jehanne, itself a feminine form of the Latin Iohannes, the name behind John. Behind the Name traces its roots to the elements Yahweh and hanan.

National Jane Day

Next celebratedSunday, June 13, 2027

A name day for the Janes, whose name the law has kept on duty since 1700 as Jane Doe, the stand-in for a woman whose real name the record cannot supply.

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Last updated August 18, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJune 13

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The calendar kept the day, not its maker.

No founder, establishing act, or registry entry for National Jane Day has been identified. The day circulates through holiday listings and personal social posts, and its first observance is not on record.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

English law has kept a Jane on hand since 1700

English courts found a use for the name Jane long before anyone gave it a holiday. By 1700 legal writing already carried a Jane Doe, the stand-in for a woman whose real name the record could not, or would not, supply. National Jane Day honours a name the language put to work.

That is an unusual afterlife for a personal name. Jane is still on duty in case files and dictionaries, while the registers that count newborns have quietly moved on.

Her counterpart travelled further. John Doe also came to mean an average man, while Jane Doe stayed exactly where it started, inside legal proceedings.

ORIGINS

Jane Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name came into English from French, and it arrived as a newcomer. Jane is the medieval English form of Jehanne, an Old French feminine of the Latin Iohannes, which is also the source of John. For centuries the usual English feminine of John was not Jane at all.

It was Joan. Jane passed it in the 1600s, and Joan passed Jane again for a few decades in the first half of the twentieth century, in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Everything that happened to the name afterwards happened to a name most English speakers thought of as ordinary.

CHAPTER 01

The queen who lasted nine days

In July 1553 the Duke of Northumberland pushed a teenager onto the English throne. He had already persuaded the sickly Edward VI to name Lady Jane Grey his heir, and Edward died on the sixth. The Council recognised her claim in London four days later.

The country rallied to Mary instead. Jane was deposed on the nineteenth, her own father abandoning her cause, and she had reigned for nine days. She was executed with her husband the following year.

CHAPTER 02

A heroine made plain on purpose

Charlotte Bronte set out to write a heroine no reader would call beautiful. She told her sisters they were wrong, even morally wrong, to make their heroines beautiful as a matter of course, and promised them one as plain and as small as herself.

Elizabeth Gaskell preserved the exchange in 1857, along with the author's own coda: but she is not myself, any further than that. The novel had arrived a decade earlier. The phrase that would later attach itself to plain Janes took another half century to surface in print.

CHAPTER 03

The name becomes a word

The earliest plain Jane anyone has traced sits in an Ayrshire newspaper in 1898, inside the longer form plain Jane and no nonsense, describing a monotonous style of dress. Reference works put the pairing down to two plain facts rather than to Bronte: the name was very common, and it rhymes with plain.

National Jane Day sits at the end of that line, and it is the one stretch of it with no author on record. What survives is the name itself: still on the registers, still in the dictionaries, and now attached to a date on the calendar.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Jane Grey reigns nine days

Lady Jane Grey's claim was recognised by the Council in London on 10 July and she was deposed on 19 July.

John Doe enters Blackstone

The fictitious plaintiff John Doe is attested in Blackstone, paired with a fictitious defendant called Richard Roe.

Jane Eyre is published

Charlotte Bronte's novel gives English fiction a heroine written on purpose to be plain, small and unattractive.

Bronte's own words survive

Elizabeth Gaskell's life of Bronte preserves the promise to show her sisters a heroine as plain as herself.

Plain Jane reaches print

An Ayrshire newspaper prints the phrase plain Jane and no nonsense, the earliest appearance anyone has traced.

Jane becomes American slang

Jane is attested in United States slang as a generic word for a girl or a girlfriend.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Jane Day

LANGUAGE

Jane is the name the law uses when it has none.

Merriam-Webster defines Jane Doe as a woman who is a party to legal proceedings and whose true name is unknown or withheld. That is a working definition in a current dictionary, not an entry left over from the archive.

CALENDARS

The queue this day never joined

The founder of the best known American day registry told Slate that 30,000 applications reach him a year, screened by a four-person committee that votes anonymously. National Jane Day did not come through that queue.

IDENTITY

A name English uses to mean any woman

Etymonline suggests Jane owes its everywoman reputation to its association with the popular boy's name John. The same entry notes that the name never once made the American top ten for girls.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Jane Day by the Numbers

7th: Jane's rank, England and Wales, 1964
1,110th: Jane's rank, England and Wales, 2025
40th: Jane's rank in the United States, 1940s
72,537: US girls named Jane, 1940s

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Jane Day

Jane and Siobhan are the same name

Behind the Name gives Siobhan as the Irish form of the Old French Jehanne, the exact source Jane came from. Sinead belongs to the same family, by way of the French diminutive Jeannette.

Me Tarzan, you Jane is in no Tarzan film

The Library of America files it with Play it again, Sam: a famous line that never appears in the movie it is credited to. MGM made six Tarzan and Jane pictures with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan without it.

Calamity Jane was a nickname by 1876

The name belonged to Martha Jane Cannary, the American frontierswoman, scout and folk hero who lived from about 1852 to 1903.

Wartime readers had a very different Jane

Norman Pett drew a glamorous Jane strip for the Daily Mirror. In the instalment of 8 November 1940 the character calls herself plain Jane.

The whole family faded together

In the 2025 register for England and Wales, Joan and Jenny recorded 14 births each. Jean managed 10 and Janet 4.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Jane Day

Look the name up in a national register

Both the Office for National Statistics and the US Social Security Administration publish name counts anyone can open. Look up the decade a Jane you know was born in and see where the name sat.

ASK

Ask a Jane which nickname she hears more

Plain Jane and Jane Doe both attached themselves to the name without asking permission. Ask a Jane in your life which of the two has followed her around longer.

TRACE

Trace the name back through Old French

A single entry will take you from Jane to Jehanne and on to the Latin Iohannes. Follow the branches sideways and the same root turns up as Jeanne in France, Juana in Spain and Giovanna in Italy.

READ

Read the royal record of the nine days

The Royal Family's own page lists Lady Jane Grey with the reign dates 10 to 19 July 1553. It takes two minutes to read and covers how she reached the throne and how quickly the Council took it back.

SEND

Send the date to the Janes in your contacts

Most people named Jane have no idea the calendar keeps a slot for them. Sending the date is the whole observance, and it takes one line.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Jane Day?

1 / 8

Which name did Jane overtake as the usual English feminine form of John?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance, and no legal recognition of it was found anywhere, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

17sources

6primary records

9independently dated

Primary records

The Royal Family

Lady Jane Grey (r. 10-19 July 1553)

The monarchy's own account of the nine-day reign and its abrupt end.