Count Jan Potocki was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a celebrated figure in Poland. He is known chiefly for his picaresque novel, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
Jan Geurt Siebelink is a Dutch author. In 2005, he wrote the novel Knielen op een bed violen that sold over 700,000 copies. In 1991, he won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs for De overkant van de rivier.
Jan Skala was a Sorbian journalist, poet and leading ideologist of the Sorbian national movement. In the interwar period (1918–1945) he was active in the Association of National Minorities in Germany for the rights of non-German ethnic groups in the Germany.
Janice Slepian, was an author of books for children and young adults and a poet. She obtained a degree in psychology at Brooklyn College, later doing graduate work in clinical psychology and speech pathology at the University of Washington in Seattle. She worked as a speech therapist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and then embarked on a writing career.
Mama Jan Smith is an American singer, songwriter, vocal coach and Grammy-nominated music producer from Atlanta, Georgia, who founded Jan Smith Studios.
Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, was a South African statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various military and cabinet posts, he served as prime minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and 1939 to 1948.
Jan Sokol was a Czech philosopher, dissident, politician and translator. He briefly served as Minister of Education, Youth and Sports in 1998 under Prime Minister Josef Tošovský. From 1990 to 1992 he was Member of Parliament for Prague. From 2000 to 2007 he served as the first dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague. Sokol ran for President of the Czech Republic in the 2003 election but lost to Václav Klaus.
Jan Stachniuk was a Polish philosopher, an editor-in-chief of the Polish pre-war nationalist journal Zadruga, the creator of the Zadruga Movement, a theoretician and the founder of culturalism.