Jospeh
Masculine · “Hebrew Yosef”
Jospeh is Joseph with two letters swapped. It has a rank in the national data because the Social Security Administration records what is written on the application, and a transposition made a few hundred times a year becomes, statistically, a name. The dataset has no spellchecker and never has.
How old is the name Jospeh?
Jospeh first appears in US birth records in 1912 — 113 years ago. The typical Jospeh alive today was born around 1986, making them about 39 years old. About 1,300 people named Jospeh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jospeh most popular?
Jospeh peaked in 1988, reaching #1124 nationally. Today it ranks #8910, 7,786 places below that high. See the whole 1988 chart.
Where it comes from
From Yosef to Jospeh
The story of Jospeh
Transposition is the most frequent single error in typed text, ahead of omission and substitution, because it requires nothing to go wrong except timing: both fingers move, one lands first. Handwriting produces it too, through the same anticipation. What makes Jospeh interesting is that the American given-name dataset preserves it. There is no correction pass, no fuzzy matching against a canonical list, and no way for a family to amend the published figures, so the error accumulates year after year and eventually clears the five-birth threshold for publication. Anyone using this data seriously has to know that a share of the long tail is not names at all: it is Jospeh, Micheal, Chirstopher and Ashely, ranked alongside real ones. The dataset is a record of what was written, which is a different thing from a record of what was intended.
Meaning
Hebrew Yosef, may he add
Jospeh is a transposition of Joseph, from Hebrew Yosef, understood in Genesis 30:24 as may Yah add another son. The e and h have exchanged places, which is the commonest of all typing and handwriting errors because it involves no wrong letters, only wrong order. The rank reflects the frequency of the error rather than a naming choice. The peak is 1988, in the period when applications moved from handwriting to keyboards.
How the name formed
- Yosef
- Joseph
- Jospeh
Related forms: Joseph · Yosef
Pronouncing Jospeh
JOH-sef
Two syllables, stress on the first. It is said exactly like Joseph; the transposed letters change nothing audible, which is why the error survives unnoticed.
Nicknames for Jospeh
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1912
- Most boys named
- 198879 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1124reached in 1988
- Change vs 2022
- +33.3%8 in 2025, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Jospeh in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Joseph in English — spelling variant
- Yosef in Hebrew — same name
Jospehs among us
people named Jospeh are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 213,510 born in 2025 was named Jospeh
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Jo test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jospeh's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jo climbed just as high around 1935, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jo's path sketches the road Jospeh is walking now.
Jospeh sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Jospeh beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jospeh in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is pronounced identically to one of the most established names in English.
- Joe and Joey are available as short forms.
- The underlying name has three thousand years of documented history.
- It will be corrected to Joseph by almost every reader and system.
- The spelling is a transposition rather than a variant.
- Documents and forms will disagree with each other constantly.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Jospeh to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Jospeh
Masculine · #8910 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jospehs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Jospeh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jospeh in 2025?
- Jospeh ranks #8910 among US boy names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jospeh?
- About 1 in every 213,510 US boys born in 2025 was named Jospeh — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jospeh with classmates?
- Jospeh will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jospeh
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Davie#8910 · Ned#8910 · Darious#8910 · Alois#8910 · Len#8910 · Barton#8910 · Desmon#8910 · Winfield#8910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jospeh? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jospeh and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
Compare side by sideIn a hurry? Just pick a winner — one tap, no sign-up, and you see how everyone else voted.
Weighing a whole shortlist? Add the rest in the builder, or settle it with a bracket.
Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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