Josephine

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Josephine boys named Josephine

By the numbers

Total US births

332,458

Estimated living today

120,000

Median age today

27

Peak year

1918

Best rank

24th

Rank in 2025

53rd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

331,467 / 991

How old the living Josephines are

born that year still alive today

Of the 332,458 babies given the name since 1880, about 120,000 are alive — 36 in every hundred. Roughly 48,000 of them are children and 38,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1998 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 French

From French Joséphine, diminutive of Josèphe, feminine form of Joseph. Popularized in English by Josephine Bonaparte, the empress of Napoleonic France.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Josephines

• Josephine Baker (1906–1975)American-born French dancer, singer and actress
• Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763–1814)Empress consort of the French from 1804 to 1814
• Josephine Hull (1877–1957)American stage and film actress
• Josephine Bakhita (1869–1947)Sudanese saint and former slave
• Josephine of Leuchtenberg (1807–1876)Queen of Sweden and Norway from 1844 to 1859
• Josephine Butler (1828–1906)British feminist and social reformer fighting to end child prostitution
• Josephine Cochrane (1839–1913)American inventor
• Princess Josephine of Denmark (born 2011)Danish princess, youngest child of Frederik X of Denmark and Queen Mary

People named Josephine with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Josephine is most common

• NY44,760
• PA26,796
• CA18,503
• IL16,561
• TX14,957
• NJ13,314
• OH11,812
• MA10,680
• MI10,183
• NC7,044

Relative to how many babies each state records, Josephine is most concentrated in New York (2.0×), Connecticut (1.8×), New Mexico (1.8×), Pennsylvania (1.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Josephine peaked:

• Mary
• Helen
• Dorothy
• Margaret
• Ruth
• Mildred

All the names of 1918

Josephine elsewhere

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.

Josephine: births by region

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, Josephine is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.12% of children were given it – 45 of them.

Josephine: rank by region

In 2025, Josephine was given 5 times or more in 4 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, Josephine was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Josephine appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (Joséphine, 65th), Province of Namur (Joséphine, 68th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Joséphine, 193rd) and Province of Antwerp (Josephine, 243rd).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.

Josephine by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Josephine 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.

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 Josephine lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 525 women called Josephine were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 22 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 30 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
• Joshua
• Jose
• Josiah
• Josie
• Josue
• Joselyn
• Josh
• Josefina
• Joslyn
• Josef
• Josette

Josephine against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Josephine vs Joseph
• Josephine vs Joshua
• Josephine vs Jose
• Josephine vs Josiah
• Josephine vs Josie
• Josephine vs Josue

Compare Josephine with a name of your own