The first name Joseph is derived from the Hebrew Yosef. Other name variants are Joseph, José, Yūsuf or Yousef. The name can be translated as ‘God adds’.
Joseph is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The first name Joseph is one of the top 100 most popular boys names in the US – currently at #19 in our SmartGenius ranking. Over 1,000 babies each year are named Joseph, accounting for approximately 0.60 % of all newborn boys. In total, there are currently 2,547,410 people – children, adults and seniors – named Joseph living in the United States, which is approximately 0.76 % of the entire population.
Joseph Fiennes (*1970)
The English Actor Joseph Fiennes is best known for his roles as William Shakespeare in 'Shakespeare in Love' (1998) and as Monsignor Timothy Howard in the series 'American Horror Story: Asylum' (2012). His brother Ralph Fiennes is also famous actor
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (*1981)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt acts since he was a child. He started his career in 1992 with the movie 'Beethoven'. He belonged to the cast of the teen film '10 Things I Hate About You' (1999) and is best known for his role as John Blake in the Batman movie 'The Dark Knight Rises' (2012). So far, he won 10 awards and was nominated almost a 50 times for several movie awards.
Joseph Pulitzer (1847 - 1911)
Joseph Pulitzer was an Hungarian-American newspaper publisher and politician. You might know him from the important Pulitzer Prizes. He established them while manifesting new standards in American journalism: He developed techniques of the so-called yellow press and stimulated interest of a wider public.
Joseph Biden (*1942)
The 46th President of the United States Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is better known under the short name Joe. After the 2020 presidential elections, the Democrat replaced his predecessor Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2021. Before entering politics, Biden worked as a public defender and later as a professor of law.
When you hear the name Joseph, you might first think of people. But did you know that there are also places with the name Joseph? Are you also called Joseph? Maybe one day you will visit the places that are named just like you...
you can find Joseph Peak, a mountain peak in the southern section of the Gallatin Range in Yellowstone National Park. The peak is named after Native American leader Chief Joseph.
Joseph Canyon is 2,000 ft (610 m) deep basalt canyon in Oregon and Washington. In this canyon you can find a part of Joseph Creek, a tributary of the Grande Ronde River.
is a ghost town in Idaho County. Like Joseph Peak, the community was named after Chief Joseph, a Nez Perce chieftain.
you can attend the Joseph Haydn Conservatory, a music school in Vienna, Austria.
History tends to focus on the most famous and the best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Joseph is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, the SmartGenius top ranking #5 has been hit more than once, although the last instance was some time ago, way back in the last century in 1917. But even though the peak of its popularity was many decades ago, the name Joseph has been given to newborn boys every year since records began. Joseph is a name of exceptional enduring popularity, conveying the special vibes of the 20th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Joseph was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Joseph is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 2,547,410 people would currently turn around if you called out JOSEPH really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Joseph on position 7 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many people named Joseph, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that Joseph is especially popular in Rhode Island? Here, 3,31% of all male residents bear the name Joseph – that is a total of 20,826 men with this popular name and no other state has as many men named Joseph relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: In Rhode Island Joseph even belongs to the top 10 of all male names – the 20,826 men called Josephelevate their name up to place #4 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names for Rhode Island.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter J is the most popular first letter for boys’ names. 10.1% of all common boys’ names in the US start with this letter. The second most common first letter in boys’ names is A.
With six letters, the name Joseph is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 10.1% of all boys’ names start with a J, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And, by the way, of all the boys’ names that begin with the letter J, the name James is the most common.
If your name is Joseph and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Joseph, you can simply say:
Joker
Orange
Sun
Elephant
Pig
Hat
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Joseph
Joseph
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
J
O
S
E
P
H
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
J
O
S
E
P
H
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Joseph sounds like this:
