Józef
given name · Latin script
Meaning: a male given name from Latin [in turn from Ancient Greek, in turn from Biblical Hebrew], equivalent to English Joseph
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/juzɛf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Józef is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Laos it is the 2nd most common given name.
- PLPoland1 in 204(measured from records)
- CZCzechia1 in 25as Josef
- ESSpain1 in 103as Jose
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 Józef itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #46 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 688 (measured from records)
- 1 in 204 (inferred from the name graph)
5,164,752 named Jose, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Joseph in US United States, NG Nigeria, Josep in BR Brazil, ES Spain, Jose in EC Ecuador, LA Laos and Josef in CZ Czechia.
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)
- Latin[in(measured from records)
- AncientGreek(measured from records)
- BiblicalHebrew](measured from records)
a male given name from Latin [in turn from Ancient Greek, in turn from Biblical Hebrew], equivalent to English Joseph
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Józef 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 5,164,752as Jose | 1 in 41 | 5.8M | Josep | 44 |
| US United States | #12 | 1,600,667as Joseph | 1 in 208 | 1.6M | Joseph | 688 |
| NG Nigeria | #15 | ≈1,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 207 | — | Joseph | 177 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 590,465as Jose | 1 in 29 | 590K | Jose | 68 |
| ES Spain | #92 | 487,678as Jose | 1 in 103 | 532K | Josep | 226 |
| CZ Czechia | #9 | 422,634as Josef | 1 in 25 | 423K | Josef | 184 |
| PL Poland | #22 | 188,007 | 1 in 204 | 196K | Józef | 123 |
| HN Honduras | — | 170,919as José | 1 in 54 | 171K | Joeseph | 15 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 127,526as Jose | 1 in 40 | 128K | — | 21 |
| LA Laos | #2 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 248 | — | Jose | 25 |
5,164,752 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022, counting the spelling jose. 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); INEC — civil registry names; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); MVČR — living population register 2017; dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); RNP — cumulative registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Józef 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.
In Polish, Joseph
as a namePolish Personal Names (CIA Foreign Names Studies, ch. 24)
Polish form of JOSEPH . Feminine form: Józefa .
as a word
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)
- Józef Poniatowskib. 1763FRnephew of King of Poland Stanislaus II; Marshal of France (1763-1813)
- Józef Bemb. 1794PLPolish general (1794–1850)
- Józef Ignacy Kraszewskib. 1812PLPolish novelist (1812–1887)
- Józef Chełmońskib. 1847PLPolish artist (1849–1914)
- Joseph Conradb. 1857UAPolish-British writer (1857–1924)
- Józef Piłsudskib. 1867LTPolish politician, First Marshall, and Prime Minister (1867–1935)
- Joseph Rotblatb. 1908GBPolish-born British-naturalised physicist
- John Paul IIb. 1920PLnot in their usual name264th pope of the Catholic Church (1978–2005)
- Józef Oleksyb. 1946PLPolish politician, Prime Minister of Poland (1946-2015)
- Jerzy Kukuczkab. 1948PLnot in their usual namePolish alpine and high-altitude climber (1948–1989)
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)
Attested in 19 sources across 10 countries.
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 does the name Józef mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Latin [in turn from Ancient Greek, in turn from Biblical Hebrew], equivalent to English Joseph Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Józef?
- In the etymology graph, Jose, Joseph and Joe are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Józef have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 5.2 million people named Jose, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Józef most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Józef is densest in Poland — about 1 in 204 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Józef?
- A machine transcription gives /juzɛf/ (IPA) for Polish.
- Is Józef a male or female name?
- Józef 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.
- How common is the name Józef?
- In Poland, the national register counted 188,007 people named Józef in 2026, about 1 in 204 residents.
- How common is Józef compared with other names?
- In Laos, Józef is the 2nd most common given name of 27,499 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Józef?
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/j%C3%B3zefThe 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, “Józef” — the 2nd most common given name in Laos. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.