Josiah
The boy's name Josiah has been in the national records since 1880, with 149,420 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 54th. About 146,000 Josiahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 11.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Josiah boys named Josiah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 149,420
- Estimated living today
- 146,000
- Median age today
- 11
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 51st
- Rank in 2025
- 54th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 462 / 148,958
How old the living Josiahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 149,420 babies given the name since 1880, about 146,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 107,000 of them are children and 250 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 Biblical Hebrew יֹאשִׁיָּה, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Josiahs
- Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903)American scientist
- Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795)English potter and founder of the Wedgwood company
- Josiah Royce (1855–1916)American philosopher
- Josiah Warren (1798–1874)American social reformer, philosopher, inventor, musician, and author
- Josiah Bartlett (1729–1795)American physician and judge, signatory of the Declaration of Independence
- Josiah McCracken (1874–1962)American football player, athlete and professor of medicine
- Josiah Latimer Clark (1822–1898)British electrical engineer
- Josiah Conder (1852–1920)British architect
People named Josiah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Josiah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Josiah is most concentrated in New Mexico (2.8×), Alaska (2.3×), Nevada (2.2×), Hawaii (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Josiah peaked:
Josiah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Josiah | 4,204 | 219th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Josiah | 92 | 226th |
| Switzerland boys | Josiah | 83 | 867th |
| Scotland boys | Josiah | 58 | 472nd |
| New Zealand boys | Josiah | 52 | 98th |
| France boys | Josiah | 50 | 3,048th |
| Ireland boys | Josiah | 45 | 516th |
| Belgium boys | Josiah | 14 | 984th |
| Poland boys | Josiah | 6 birth registrations | 729th |
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.
Josiah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Josiah | 68 | 0.005% | 694th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Josiah | 13 | 0.003% | 679th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Josiah | 2 | 0.003% | 188th |
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.
Josiah: rank by region
In 2023, Josiah was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Josiah | 879 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Josiah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Josiah 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Josiah | 26 | 44 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Josiah 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.