José
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Hebrew Yosef; "he (God) will add, increase"; name of divine blessing
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- Peru (RENIEC, 2019): listed as male
- Honduras (RNP, 2023): listed as male
- Paraguay (Dirección General del Registro del Estado Civil, 2015): listed as male
- Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 49 countries
/xoˈse/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
José is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Mexico than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common given name.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 14(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 20
- MXMexico≈1 in 22
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than José itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Mexico (inferred from the name graph)
- #5 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 613 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14 (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,900,000 people, est.
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Jose in BR Brazil, US United States, MX Mexico and 5 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Hebrew Yosef; "he (God) will add, increase"; name of divine blessing
Cited for this meaning 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
How José is read
(measured from records)José is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish63%
Hebrew Yosef; "he (God) will add, increase"; name of divine blessing
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- Portuguese23%
a male given name from Hebrew, equivalent to English Joseph
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)José counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MX Mexico | #2 | ≈5,900,000 est. | ≈1 in 22 | 3.6K | Jose | 337 |
| BR Brazil | #2 | 5,164,752 | 1 in 41 | 5.8M | Jose | 270 |
| VE Venezuela | #1 | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 20 | — | Jose | 193 |
| US United States | #20 | 1,211,106 | 1 in 275 | 1.2M | Jose | 613 |
| CO Colombia | #4 | ≈1,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 51 | 505 | Jose | 251 |
| SV El Salvador | #1 | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 14 | 1 | Jose | 142 |
| NI Nicaragua | #2 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 22 | — | Jose | 115 |
| PR Puerto Rico | #2 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 27 | 5 | Jose | 139 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); This page details the top 100 names by frequency in El Salvador, published by Students of the World.; the co-datosgov-candidates register; SSA Baby Names — Puerto Rico (state file PR.txt). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)José is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Spanish/Portuguese form of Joseph, from Hebrew Yosef 'he will add'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Mariana, Paranapanema, Sabara, Brasil, Faro, Buenos Aires; Iosef, Gen 29:2C; bef. 1492
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Swedish, José är en spansk och portugisisk form av → Josef.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Jusepe de Riberab. 1591ESnot in their usual nameSpanish painter (1591–1652)
- José de San Martínb. 1778ARArgentine general and independence leader (1778–1850)
- José Echegaray y Eizaguirreb. 1832ESSpanish playwright (1832-1916)
- José Rizalb. 1861PHFilipino nationalist, writer and polymath (1861–1896)
- Jozef Tisob. 1887HUnot in their usual nameSlovak politician, priest and president of the Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945
- José Raúl Capablancab. 1888CUCuban chess player (1888-1942)
- José Ferrerb. 1912USAmerican actor and director (1912–1992)
- Camilo José Celab. 1916ESSpanish writer (1916–2002)
- Xanana Gusmãob. 1946TLnot in their usual namePrime Minister and former President of East Timor
- Cote de Pablob. 1979CLnot in their usual nameChilean-American actress
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)77 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 49 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 5.8M | #8 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 40 | #81 |
| MX Mexico | RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset) | — | 5 | #5,007 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name José?
- In the etymology graph, Joseph, Joe and Josef are forms of the same name in other languages; Pepe, Zé and Zezé are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name José mean, and where does it come from?
- Hebrew Yosef; "he (God) will add, increase"; name of divine blessing Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- Is José a male or female name?
- José is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: Peru (RENIEC, 2019): listed as male; Honduras (RNP, 2023): listed as male; Paraguay (Dirección General del Registro del Estado Civil, 2015): listed as male; Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female. We don't publish a percentage split.
- How do you pronounce José?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /xoˈse/ (Wiktionary); in Portuguese /ʒoˈzɛ/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does José have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.9 million people named José in Mexico, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jose.
- How common is the name José?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 5,164,752 people named José in 2022, about 1 in 41 residents.
- How common is José compared with other names?
- In Mexico, José is the 2nd most common given name of 193,485 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about José?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jos%C3%A9The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “José” — the 2nd most common given name in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.