Likely a modern elaboration of Jana or Janiah, with possible Hebrew influence and a contemporary English ending.
Janyah is a compressed, crystalline variant that strips Janayah to its essential music: three syllables that move from a soft opening through a lifted center to the resonant '-yah' close. The '-yah' ending is among the most ancient naming elements still in active use — it is the shortened divine name appearing in Hebrew scriptures as Yah, a theophoric suffix found in names like Elijah (my God is Yah), Isaiah (salvation of Yah), and Jeremiah (God will exalt). To end a name in '-yah' is to anchor it, however lightly, to this vast Hebraic tradition of naming children as small prayers.
The 'Jan-' opening connects to a broad family of European and Middle Eastern names: the Latin Janus, two-faced god of beginnings and doorways for whom January is named; the Hebrew Yochanah; the Slavic Jana. Janyah does not commit to any single lineage but draws phonetic warmth from all of them, functioning as a kind of crossroads name — familiar enough not to require explanation, unusual enough to be genuinely one's own. In American naming practice, particularly within communities that have long treated naming as creative and meaningful work rather than mere inheritance, Janyah represents a considered choice.
It is soft without being fragile, brief without being stark, and spiritual without being ostentatious. The name's tightest comparison is probably Aaliyah — a name of Arabic origin ('high, exalted') that became culturally beloved for its sound alone — suggesting that Janyah may have a similar arc: phonetically beautiful, meaningfully rooted, and entirely available for a new generation to make its own.