Josh

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Josh is a given name, most frequently recorded in Venezuela, where it is the most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: heat; passion, excitement.

rarermore common
  • GTGuatemala1 in 10◐
  • CUCuba1 in 12
  • VEVenezuela1 in 16

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈9.8M ●

across 11 countries

#4 ●

of 16M given names

8 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
618 ●

71M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 25 ◐

Czechia

Spellings & scripts●

JoseLatin · Portuguese●62M records
ЙосипCyrillic · Ukrainian●130K records
ᲘოსებGeorgian · Georgian●15K records
โจเซฟThai · Thai●1.5K records
ג'ושHebrew · Hebrew●341 records
호세Hangul · Korean●164 records
ΙωσήφGreek · Greek●81 records
ՋուզեպպեArmenian · Armenian●0 records

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Jose in BR Brazil, ES Spain, VE Venezuela and 10 more, Joseph in US United States, FR France, GB United Kingdom and 8 more, Josef in CZ Czechia and Jozef in PL Poland.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

heat; passion, excitement

Sources 1

  • Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Josh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
VE Venezuela#111,814,4735.5M rec.—4.3KJose189
AR Argentina#310,981,3105.9M rec.—4KJose198
MX Mexico#29,569,6907.5M rec.—3.6KJose318
BR Brazil#25,164,7525.8M rec.1 in 415.8MJose263
PE Peru#24,191,4022.4M rec.—696KJose185
GT Guatemala#13,716,283227K rec.—3.2KJose151
US United States#71,598,75929M rec.1 in 2081.6MJoseph618
CL Chile#51,556,471141K rec.—1KJose195
GB United Kingdom#171,221,9991.2M rec.—946Joseph304
CU Cuba#101,006,80546K rec.——Joseph88
PH Philippines#7784,5791.1M rec.——Joseph190
TZ Tanzania#2772,54112K rec.——Joseph76

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English1.4M83%
  • 75K4%
  • Spanish63K4%
  • French14K1%
  • German14K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,448,43383%
74,6464%
Spanish62,6394%
French14,4371%
German14,1161%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Josh is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name114K records spelled Josh12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, United Kingdom, Philippines

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Jösh, Josh', Jôsh, 'Josh

  • Chinese given name8.9K records spelled Josh3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: Chinese, Burmese

    Also written Jósh

  • Indonesian given name5.8K records spelled Josh3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Jôšh

  • Turkish given name3.6K records spelled Josh4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Philippines

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Jošh

  • Thai given name2.3K records spelled Josh4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Thailand, Laos, United Kingdom

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written Jösh

  • a separate given name1.7K records spelled Josh2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand

    Also written J̶̲̥̅̊o̶̲̥̅̊s̶̲̥̅̊h̶̲̥̅̊

68 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Josh is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • English: short form of JOSHUA , occasionally used as an independent given name.

    as a word

  • In Albanian, to fondle, caress

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

0200400600190019502000531 · 1979

Show as table
Josh in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188031
188122
188214
188327
188427
188523
188629
188715
188824
188922
189024
189119
189222
189316
189418
189527
189623
189721
189822
189917
190025
190118
190217
190321
190418
190517
190613
190719
190826
190921
191023
191130
191239
191337
191439
191540
191655
191742
191849
191941
192045
192136
192250
192349
192447
192545
192646
192741
192844
192936
193028
193130
193240
193330
193439
193534
193644
193738
193833
193932
194031
194131
194231
194325
194435
194534
194643
194740
194845
194946
195039
195141
195254
195358
195451
195550
195653
195753
195869
1959128
1960129
1961132
1962102
1963115
196495
1965105
1966101
1967105
1968135
1969193
1970248
1971325
1972356
1973401
1974493
1975456
1976387
1977383
1978431
1979531
1980461
1981347
1982298
1983299
1984259
1985248
1986220
1987233
1988240
1989213
1990212
1991181
1992181
1993186
1994169
1995183
1996166
1997189
1998166
1999194
2000195
2001246
2002274
2003273
2004308
2005266
2006302
2007316
2008271
2009205
2010178
2011180
2012167
2013152
2014166
2015123
2016108
2017129
2018113
2019103
202094
2021100
202294
202389
202495
202596

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1960197019801990Josh Brolin, b. 1968Josh Holloway, b. 1969Josh Charles, b. 1971Josh Duhamel, b. 1972Josh Stewart, b. 1977Josh Keaton, b. 1979Josh Klinghoffer, b. 1979Josh Lawson, b. 1981Josh Gad, b. 1981Josh Groban, b. 1981

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 71 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Josh
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020125K#448
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024560#1,941
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000344#55,732
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010324#61,899
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020302#69,958
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022264—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—259#20,873
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—228#5,060
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020220#448
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—182#18,908
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—150#6,470
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020129—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 693 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Josh?
We estimate roughly 9.8 million people bear Josh (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Josh have the most bearers?
Josh is most frequently recorded in Venezuela, where it is most often spelled jose.
How common is Josh compared with other names?
In Venezuela, Josh is the most common given name of 213,120 given names recorded there.
Is Josh a male or female name?
Josh is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Josh mean?
Recorded meaning: heat; passion, excitement
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/josh

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Josh” — the most common given name in Venezuela. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Josh parses inside a full name →