Joseph
Joseph reached its high-water mark in 1956 at number 12, and has been recorded 2,680,213 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 29th. About 1.7 million Josephs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 44.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Joseph boys named Joseph
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,680,213
- Estimated living today
- 1.7 million
- Median age today
- 44
- Peak year
- 1956
- Best rank
- 12th
- Rank in 2025
- 29th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 10,723 / 2,669,490
How old the living Josephs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,680,213 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.7 million are alive — 63 in every hundred. Roughly 192,000 of them are children and 360,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1981 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 Hebrew
From Middle English Ioseph, ultimately from Biblical Hebrew יוֹסֵף; a son of Jacob.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Josephs
- Joseph Stalin (1878–1953)leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953
- Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)Austrian composer
- Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
- Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)French mathematician and physicist
- Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)Polish-British writer
- Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996)Russian-American poet
- Joseph John Thomson (1856–1940)British physicist
- Joseph Smith (1805–1844)founder of the Latter Day Saint movement and prophet
People named Joseph with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Joseph is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Joseph is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.2×), New Jersey (1.9×), Pennsylvania (1.8×), Connecticut (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1956
The most popular boys’ names the year Joseph peaked:
Joseph elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Joseph | 380,150 | 7th |
| England and Wales boys | Joseph | 103,070 | 8th |
| Ireland boys | Joseph | 19,547 | 11th |
| New Zealand boys | Joseph | 10,528 | 18th |
| Scotland boys | Joseph | 7,497 | 46th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Joseph | 2,266 | 27th |
| Italy boys | Joseph | 1,864 | — |
| Belgium boys | Joseph | 933 | 241st |
| Norway boys | Joseph | 586 | 270th |
| France girls | Joseph | 450 | 404th |
| Switzerland boys | Joseph | 345 | 366th |
| Poland boys | Joseph | 233 birth registrations | 272nd |
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.
Joseph: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Joseph | 144 | 0.012% | 383rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Joseph | 194 | 0.045% | 142nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Joseph | 7 | 0.011% | 179th |
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, Joseph is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.07% of children were given it – 69 of them.
Joseph: rank by region
In 2025, Joseph was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Joseph | 464 | 12 |
| Wallonia | Joseph | 267 | 10 |
| Brussels | Joseph | 265 | 5 |
In 2015, Joseph was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Joseph | 10 | 2 |
In 2025, Joseph was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Joseph | 269 | 3 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joseph appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (215th), Province of Antwerp (251st) and Brussels-Capital Region (265th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy 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.
Joseph by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 56 | 255th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Joseph 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 boys | Joseph | 16,531 | 67,721 |
| the Netherlands girls | Joseph | 6 | 2,366 |
| Finland boys | Joseph | 199 | 574 |
| Finland girls | Joseph | — | 19 |
Among girls in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 2,366 who carry it, 6 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 Joseph lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,489 men called Joseph 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Almería | Joseph | 53 | 0.135 | 610 |
| Girona | Joseph | 49 | 0.118 | 669 |
| Málaga | Joseph | 93 | 0.106 | 600 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Joseph | 56 | 0.105 | 869 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Joseph | 104 | 0.103 | 764 |
| Palmas, Las | Joseph | 58 | 0.100 | 911 |
Listed in 35 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 17 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Joseph 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.