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Japanese No one named Gianna appears in the Bible, but the name it comes from does. Gianna is an Italian short form of Giovanna, the feminine of Giovanni, which is Italian for John. John comes from the Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh is gracious,” and the Bible’s feminine form of it is Joanna.
What does Gianna mean?
Gianna means what John means. Giovanna is the Italian form of the Latin Iohanna, which came from the Greek Ioanna, the feminine of Ioannes, John. Ioannes in turn came from the Hebrew Yohanan, made of yo, from Yahweh, the name of God, and hanan, “to be gracious.” Gianna therefore shares the meaning “Yahweh is gracious,” often given as “God is gracious,” with Joanna, Joan, the French Jeanne and the Spanish Juana. In Greece, Gianna is also used as a form of Ioanna. Giana, with one n, is a variant spelling.
Gianna in the Bible: Joanna and John
Joanna appears twice, both times in Luke’s Gospel. As Jesus travels through towns and villages with the Twelve, Luke names three of the women who went with them and supported them from their own resources: Mary Magdalene; “Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager”; and Susanna (Luke 8:1–3). At the end of the Gospel she is named again, with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, among the women who brought the apostles the news of the empty tomb (Luke 24:10).
The masculine form belongs to two of the best-known people in the New Testament: John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus, and the apostle John, one of the Twelve, traditionally regarded as the author of the fourth Gospel. The Hebrew form also appears in the Old Testament, where English Bibles spell it Johanan or Jehohanan.
A Bible verse for the name Gianna
The verses most closely tied to the name are in the first chapter of Luke, where it is given to John the Baptist. An angel tells the priest Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son, “and you shall call his name John” (Luke 1:13). Zechariah doubts the message and is left unable to speak. When the child is circumcised, the relatives want to name him Zechariah after his father, but Elizabeth answers, “No; he shall be called John.” They object that none of their relatives has that name, and Zechariah asks for a writing tablet and writes, “His name is John” (Luke 1:59–63).
The meaning of the name is also in Scripture. When the Lord passes before Moses on Mount Sinai, he proclaims, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious” (Exodus 34:6). The Hebrew word translated “gracious” there, hannun, comes from the same root, hanan, as the second half of Yohanan.
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla
The best-known Gianna in Christian history is an Italian saint of the 20th century. Gianna Beretta was born in Magenta, near Milan, on 4 October 1922. She qualified in medicine and surgery at the University of Pavia in 1949, opened a clinic in the nearby town of Mesero in 1950, and specialized in pediatrics at the University of Milan in 1952. She married the engineer Pietro Molla in 1955, and they had three children.
In 1961, early in her fourth pregnancy, doctors found a fibroma, a benign tumor, in her uterus. She chose to have only the tumor removed and refused the hysterectomy the doctors recommended, since it would have ended the pregnancy. Before the birth she told the doctors that if they had to choose between her life and the child’s, they should save the child. Her daughter, Gianna Emanuela, was born on 21 April 1962. Gianna Molla died of an infection a week later, on 28 April, at the age of 39.
Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1994 and canonized her on 16 May 2004. Her feast is kept on 28 April, the day of her death, and Franciscan Media lists her as a patron saint of doctors, unborn children and wives. Her daughter Gianna Emanuela also became a physician.
When did Gianna become a common name?
In the United States Gianna entered the list of the 1,000 most common names for girls in 1989, rose to 63rd by 2011, and stood at 79th in 2019. In 2020 it jumped to 13th. That January, Gianna Bryant, the 13-year-old daughter of the basketball player Kobe Bryant, had died with her father and seven others in a helicopter crash. The name ranked 13th again in 2021 and 33rd in 2025.
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