Jos
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Nigerian place name: capital of Benue-Plateau State in north-central Nigeria
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒos/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jos is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- FIFinland≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 2.9K
- CACanada≈1 in 29K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 247 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belgium, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Nigerian place name: capital of Benue-Plateau State in north-central Nigeria.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 28 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jos 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Jos | 13 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 8 | Jos | 60 |
| NL Netherlands | #687 | 5,957 | 1 in 2.9K | 5.6K | Jos | 88 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Jos | 76 |
| FI Finland | #459 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 39 | Jos | 4 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 29K | 1 | Jos | 84 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 4 | Jos | 21 |
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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Jos is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
,2 Short form of Joseph, Josiah, or pJocelyn. Josceline ° Variant of Jocelyn as a girl’s name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Romanian, adv. 1. Giosu, N., act. ; Josul fain. 2. Josea (16 B I 439). 3. Josan (Ard) ; Jos /ani, eni ss. ; -escu ; Giosan, Tanasie (Sd VI) ; - ul (CL) ; s. (ib.). Joseni", locuitorii din Tara de Jos" din Moldova ; Giosa, Mate', din Giosani (Bir IV). Jovardan v. Javerdan 4 a.
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
In German, ) Joss: männl. Vom., verselbststän digte Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In roa-oca, alternative form of jus (“down”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hausa, Jos (a city, the state capital of Plateau State, Nigeria)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jos Cuypersb. 1861NLDutch architect (1861-1949)
- Jos van Kemenadeb. 1937NLDutch politician (1937-2020)
- Jos Stellingb. 1945NLDutch film director and screenwriter (born 1945)
- Jos Van Immerseelb. 1945BEFlemish harpsichordist, pianist and conductor
- Jos Hermensb. 1950NLDutch long-distance runner
- Jos de Putterb. 1959NLDutch film director
- Jos Luhukayb. 1963NLDutch footballer and manager
- Jos Verstappenb. 1972NLDutch racing driver
- Jos Hooiveldb. 1983NLDutch footballer
- Jos Buttlerb. 1990AUEnglish cricketer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 49 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 5.6K | #350 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 3.4K | #948 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 388 | #2,395 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 129 | #6,928 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 39 | #8,284 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #17,516 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2023 | 1 | #2,230 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Jos mean, and where does it come from?
- Nigerian place name: capital of Benue-Plateau State in north-central Nigeria. Recorded by African Names.
- What are other forms of the name Jos?
- In the etymology graph, Jose, Joseph and Joe are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Jos have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Jos in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jos.
- How do you pronounce Jos?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒos/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Jos a male or female name?
- Jos 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 Jos?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5,957 people named Jos, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Jos compared with other names?
- In Finland, Jos is the 459th most common given name of 19,056 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jos?
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/josThe 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, “Jos” — the 459th most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.