Joanne

Meaning: (God is Gracious, Joanne (alternate spellings Joann, Jo Ann, Johann, Johanne, Jo-Ann, Jo-Anne) is a common given name for females, being a variant of Joanna, the feminine form of John; derived from the Latin name Johanna with the meaning in Hebrew of "God is gracious". 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.

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'.

In the United Kingdom, its popularity peaked during the 1970s, when it was frequently among the 10 most popular female names. However, by the 1980s it had fallen out of the top 10 and by 1994 it wasn't even in the top 100.)

Origin: (Ancient Greek, Latin, English, French, Hebrew)

Pronunciation: (Joh-AN, Jo-AN (English), zho-AN (French))

Gender: Female           

I have used this name as the name of a governess of my main character before in one of my Historical Fiction Novellas. I also came to like it in the Hunger Games movies. The meaning is very nice and it has a long history of use and many different spelling options. Though a common name by most people it has fallen out of use in the recent era so you are probably not liable to hear of a lot of kids in school with this name if you’re thinking of this as a baby name. As for a character name it is very nice but I still see this as a secondary characters name but it would do well no matter how prominent the characters role is in their story.