Holiday Calendar

National Joey Day

Next celebratedWednesday, July 14, 2027

The people who go by Joey get July 14, whether it is short for Joseph or the name on the birth certificate. It was never a crowded name, and it has never needed to be.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJuly 14
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The trail runs out in August 2022.

No founder, launch announcement or registration for National Joey Day has been found. The earliest dated trace of it is a holiday listing captured by the Internet Archive on 12 August 2022, already giving the date as July 14, which fixes a point by which the day was circulating rather than a point at which it began.

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INTRO

Three things English decided to call a joey

A circus clown was a joey. So was a silver fourpenny coin, and so, from 1839, was a young kangaroo. National Joey Day honours the people who answer to the name, but the name itself went wandering in the nineteenth century and never entirely came back.

Two of those borrowings are traced to real men called Joseph. The clown took the name from Joseph Grimaldi. The coin took it from Joseph Hume, a radical MP whom London's cab drivers had a specific reason to resent.

What the name has never been is common. In the federal birth record, Joey has never ranked higher than 194th among American boys.

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ORIGINS

Joey Day history

CHAPTER 01

The clown who gave his name away

Joseph Grimaldi first appeared as a clown at Sadler's Wells in Islington in 1800, in a piece called Peter Wilkins, or, Harlequin in the Flying World. Over a thirty year career the part became so completely his that audiences began calling it by his own short name instead.

It stuck long after him. By 1926 a glossary of American circus talk needed only a line for it, and printed the whole definition as three words.

CHAPTER 02

A coin named out of spite

In 1836 the silver fourpence went back into British circulation. The push came from Joseph Hume, who wanted more small change in everyday use. The new coin promptly became the usual payment for a shorter cab ride, in place of the sixpence.

London's drivers understood the arithmetic immediately. A passenger who had been handing over a sixpence and waving away the change would now pay fourpence exactly, and the tip vanished with it. They named the coin after the man responsible.

The nickname then outlived the coin. The Royal Mint's own account of its coinage says it later appears to have transferred to the threepence once the fourpence fell out of use, and Orwell was still using the word that way in 1936.

CHAPTER 03

Australia takes the word

The same year the coin reached print, so did the sense most people now know. A young kangaroo was a joey by 1839, and the reason is genuinely unsettled: older sources point to a native Australian word, newer ones say the origin is simply not known, and some suggest it is the proper name again.

Australia then kept reassigning it. Green's records joey for a newcomer on the goldfields by 1864, and for a military policeman by 1924. Each time the same short name gets pinned to somebody new, which is the behaviour of a word that has stopped belonging to the people it started with.

CHAPTER 04

The day with nothing behind it

The observance is the least documented thing on this page. No founder, no announcement, no registration and no organisation stands behind National Joey Day, and two of the widely read national day registries carry no page for it at all. Neither has an archived Joey page, though the Internet Archive holds their pages for other days.

That leaves an odd asymmetry. The word joey can be dated to the decade in a slang dictionary, argued over by etymologists, and followed through a Coventry newspaper and the Royal Mint's own account of its coinage. The day set aside for the people who carry the name cannot be dated at all.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A clown becomes a common noun

The earliest sense Green's Dictionary of Slang files under joey appears in print: a circus clown, named for the pantomime performer Joseph Grimaldi.

The fourpence comes back

The silver fourpence returns to circulation, brought back at the urging of the radical MP Joseph Hume.

Two senses reach print together

The Coventry Herald of 11 October prints joey for the coin. The same year gives the first record of joey for a young kangaroo, a sense whose origin is still unsettled.

The first American Joeys

Six boys are registered Joey in the American data. The federal series lists none at all in any year from 1880 through 1914.

The name's biggest year

American parents give the name to 1,529 boys, more than in any other year on record.

The day leaves its first mark

A web archive capture made on 12 August preserves a listing that already fixes the observance to July 14. Nothing older has surfaced.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Joey Day by the Numbers

53,758
US boys registered Joey since 1880
7,644
US girls registered Joey since 1880
50 to 1
Josephs per Joey in US birth records
58.6%
Share of 2021 US Joey births that were boys
Joey a fourpenny piece. The term is derived (like bobby from Sir Robert Peel) from Joseph Hume, the late respected M.P.
The Slang Dictionary1873
JOEY is a familiar name for anything young or small, and is applied indifferently to a puppy, or a kitten, or a child.
Australian Colloquialismsan 1887 article, quoted in Farmer and Henley's Slang and Its Analogues

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Friends made Joey a popular name.

The truth

The show premiered in September 1994, the year 554 American boys were registered Joey. Across its entire ten year run the annual figure never reached that level again, and it fell in each of the four years after the Joey spin off series began in 2004.

The myth

Joey was a big name in the 1980s.

The truth

The 1980s were its steepest decline of any decade, from 1,154 boys in 1980 down to 605 in 1989. Its largest year was 1962.

The myth

Every Joey is short for Joseph.

The truth

Usually, but not always. The Library of Congress files the Ramones' singer under the heading Ramone, Joey, with the variant form Hyman, Jeffrey.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Joey Day

Language

Joey is catalogued as vocabulary, not just as a name.

Most personal names are documented in books about names. Joey is documented in a dictionary of slang, where Green's files its senses under a heading for uses of proper names. That is a small but real distinction: it marks the point where a name stops being only a label for people and starts doing ordinary work in the language.

Rarity

A name that never went mainstream

Joey has spent its whole American life outside the popular tier, which makes it an unusual foundation for a name day. Fewer than five hundred American babies now receive it in a year, so the day speaks to a genuinely small group rather than a crowd.

Record

A claim about a name can be checked

The Social Security Administration publishes the count for every name given to American babies each year, going back to 1880. That turns a story about a name from something people repeat into something anyone can test, and this name has collected a few stories worth testing.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Joey Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look the name up in the federal record

The national baby name files are free to download, one year per file. Pull your own birth year and count how many Joeys were registered alongside you.

ASK

Ask a Joey what the birth certificate says

Some are Joseph on paper and Joey everywhere else. Some were registered Joey outright from the start. It is a short question that usually turns up a family story attached to it.

READ

Read the slang dictionary entry

Green's Dictionary of Slang lays out the clown, the coin and the Australian senses with dated citations for each. It takes about five minutes and it settles most arguments about the word.

HUNT

Hunt down the coin that carried the name

The silver fourpenny groat and the threepenny bit that inherited its nickname both turn up cheaply in coin shops and inherited tins. Find one and you are holding a joey.

PUT

Put July 14 in a shared calendar

Add it wherever the Joeys in your life will actually see it, then send them the entry so the reminder arrives without you having to remember it.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Joey Day?

1 / 8

Which of these was called a joey in the nineteenth century?

Answer

No. It is not among the US federal public holidays set by 5 U.S.C. 6103, where the only July holiday is Independence Day on July 4, and no proclamation, statute or resolution establishing it has been located.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

8sources
4primary records
2independently dated
Primary records
The Royal Mint
Coin Names and Their Nicknames: The Threepence
The UK's coin issuing authority explains why the silver fourpence was nicknamed a joey, Joseph Hume's part in bringing it back in the 1830s, the cab drivers' grievance about the lost tip, and the nickname's later move to the threepence.
View source
U.S. Social Security Administration2026 release, through birth year 2025
Popular Baby Names: national data
The federal record of first names given to American babies at birth, by sex, in one file per year from 1880 to 2025. Every count, rank and ratio on this page was recomputed from this dataset.
View source
Library of Congress
Ramone, Joey, 1951-2001 (Name Authority File)
The national name authority record for the Ramones' singer, giving the authorized heading Ramone, Joey alongside the variant form Hyman, Jeffrey.
View source
U.S. Office of Personnel ManagementSchedules published through 2030
Federal Holidays
The complete list of US federal public holidays and the statute that establishes them, 5 U.S.C. 6103, used here to state precisely which July date carries federal standing.
View source
Additional coverage
Green's Dictionary of Slang
joey, n.1
A scholarly slang dictionary entry filed under uses of proper names, tracing the circus clown sense to about 1815 and Joseph Grimaldi, the fourpenny coin sense to 1839 and Joseph Hume, and the threepenny bit sense to 1936, with dated print citations throughout.
View source
Online Etymology Dictionary
joey
Dates the young kangaroo sense to 1839 and sets out why its origin remains disputed, and reproduces an 1887 article on Australian colloquialisms describing joey as a name for anything young or small.
View source
London Museum
Joseph Grimaldi: King of the clowns
The museum's account of Grimaldi, giving his dates as 1778 to 1837, his first appearance as a clown at Sadler's Wells in 1800 in Peter Wilkins, or, Harlequin in the Flying World, and the thirty year career that followed.
View source
HISTORY
Friends debuts
Dates the NBC premiere of Friends to 22 September 1994, the reference point used here for testing whether the show moved the name.
View source
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