Jose
The boy's name Jose has been in the national records since 1880, with 596,732 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 95th. About 518,000 Joses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 31.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jose boys named Jose
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 596,732
- Estimated living today
- 518,000
- Median age today
- 31
- Peak year
- 2002
- Best rank
- 30th
- Rank in 2025
- 95th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 4,220 / 592,512
How old the living Joses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 596,732 babies given the name since 1880, about 518,000 are alive — 87 in every hundred. Roughly 96,000 of them are children and 34,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1994 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Spanish
From Spanish/Portuguese José, from Hebrew.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Joses
- José Saramago (1922–2010)Portuguese novelist
- José Mujica (1935–2025)Uruguayan guerrilla fighter and politician
- José Martí (1853–1895)Cuban poet, philosopher and nationalist
- Camilo José Cela (1916–2002)Spanish writer
- José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (born 1960)Spanish politician
- José Rizal (1861–1896)Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath
- José de San Martín (1778–1850)Argentine general and independence leader
- José Echegaray (1832–1916)Spanish playwright
People named Jose with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jose is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jose is most concentrated in New Mexico (3.9×), Texas (3.8×), Arizona (3.0×), California (2.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2002
The most popular boys’ names the year Jose peaked:
Jose elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | José +1 spelling | 57,655 | 47th |
| Spain boys | Jose | 28,919 | 27th |
| France girls | José | 1,580 | 197th |
| England and Wales boys | Jose | 960 | 434th |
| Norway boys | Jose | 907 | 177th |
| Portugal boys | José | 636 name registrations | 20th |
| Switzerland boys | José | 273 | 448th |
| Italy boys | Jose | 231 | — |
| Belgium boys | José | 141 | 681st |
| Ireland boys | Jose +1 spelling | 33 | 430th |
| Poland boys | José +1 spelling | 26 birth registrations | 373rd |
| Scotland boys | Jose | 16 | 266th |
| England and Wales girls | Jose | 7 | 4,524th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jose | 3 | 341st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Jose: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | José | 145 | 0.012% | 377th |
| French boys | Switzerland | José | 116 | 0.027% | 197th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | José | 10 | 0.015% | 115th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | José | 2 | 0.054% | 19th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Jose is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.04% of children were given it – 39 of them.
Jose: rank by region
In 2024, Jose was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | José | 882 | 5 |
| Brussels | José | 257 | 5 |
In 2019, Jose was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Región de Murcia | Jose | 9 | 113 |
In 2022, Jose was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | José | 258 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jose appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (257th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Jose among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | José | 5,088 | 13,473 |
| the Netherlands boys | José | 572 | 2,336 |
| Finland boys | Jose +1 spelling | 1,021 | 1,285 |
| Finland girls | Jose +1 spelling | — | 20 |
Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 2,336 who carry it, 572 go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Jose lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 487,678 men called Jose were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lugo | Jose | 6,868 | 43.407 | 2 |
| Ourense | Jose | 6,178 | 42.128 | 2 |
| Córdoba | Jose | 15,030 | 39.769 | 5 |
| Jaén | Jose | 10,981 | 35.890 | 4 |
| Murcia | Jose | 28,023 | 35.255 | 2 |
| Granada | Jose | 15,976 | 34.361 | 3 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Jose against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.