Definition of "Joan"

Maybe my mother didn't name me after Joan Crawford after all, I thought; she just told me that to cover up. She named me after Joan of Arc, didn't she know what happened to women like that?

1979, Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle, page 336

Ber. O and I forsoth in loue, I that haue been loues whip?...Well, I will loue, write, sigh, pray, shue, grone,Some men must loue my Ladie, and some Ione.

1598, William Shakespeare, Loues Labors Lost, 1st Quarto, Act III, Scene i

Joan’s as good as this French lady.

1606, Thomas Heywood, If You Knouu Not Me, You Know No Bodie

‘Ioan in the darke is as good as my lady:’Nay, perhapps better, such ladies there may bee.

1611, John Davies, "Vpon Englishe Prouerbs", Scourge of Folly, §386

Bast. A foot of Honor better then I was,But many a many foot of Land the worse.Well, now can I make any Ioane a Lady,Good den Sir Richard, Godamercy fellow,And if his name be George, Ile call him Peter;For new made honor doth forget mens names...

1623, William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Iohn, act I, scene i

...when Henslowe notes Heywood's next play he has a little more respect for him; for, although the total was again but five pounds, three pounds on February 10, 1598/9 and the rest two days later, the dramatist on both occasions is Mr. Heywood. The only surviving fragment of the piece, ‘Jonne as good as my ladey’, may be a song in Γυναικεῖον with the burden 'What care I how faire she bee...

1931, Arthur Melville Clark, Thomas Heywood, page 12

A wife. But what wife and when? Pretty, yes, but godly and modest. He remembers something Taffy said once: ‘A homely Joan is as good as a lady when the lights are out.’ Aye, Taf, he thinks, but best to marry one whose face you can worship. An image of Lucy Tompkins pops unbidden into his mind.

2014, Antonia Senior, Treason's Daughter, page 169

A grocer's wife attractd our eyes by a new-fashioned cap called a Joan.

1756, Connoisseur, number 134, page 810