Josefa
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Feminine of José
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/xosefa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Josefa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 92nd most common given name.
- ESSpain1 in 221(measured from records)
- NINicaragua≈1 in 328
- BRBrazil1 in 771
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #810 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 237 (measured from records)
- 1 in 221 (inferred from the name graph)
274,653 people, 2022
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Feminine of José
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Josefa 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 | #92 | 274,653 | 1 in 771 | 343K | Josefa | 105 |
| ES Spain | #65 | 225,853 | 1 in 221 | 247K | Josefa | 171 |
| AR Argentina | #251 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 15 | Josefa | 56 |
| VE Venezuela | #135 | 27,926 | 1 in 1K | 28K | Josefa | 41 |
| PH Philippines | #803 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Josefa | 64 |
| NI Nicaragua | #24 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 328 | — | Josefa | 25 |
| CL Chile | #278 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 999 | 1.7K | Josefa | 107 |
274,653 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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); RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021). 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)
Josefa 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.
In English, feminine form of Joseph
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, ) Josepha: in Deutschland seit dem 18. Jh. vorkommender weibl. Vom., weibliche Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Feminine form of sosEE.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Dios proveerá
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Feminine form of JOSEPH , used in Spanish, Portuguese, the Scandinavian languages, and Czech. Pet forms: Spanish: Pepa, Pepita .
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)
- Gabriela Silangb. 1731PHnot in their usual nameFilipina insurgent leader
- Josefa Ortiz de Domínguezb. 1768MXMexican insurgent (1768–1829)
- Maria Theresa of Austria-Esteb. 1773ITnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Piedmont-Sardinia
- Josepha Sophie of Fürstenberg-Weitrab. 1776LInot in their usual namePrincess Consort of Liechtenstein (1776-1848)
- Fernán Caballerob. 1796ESnot in their usual nameSpanish women novelist (1796-1877)
- Queen Maria Isabel of Spainb. 1797ESnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Spain (1797-1818)
- Mercedes of Orléansb. 1860ESnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Spain
- Josefa Iloilob. 1920FJPresident of Fiji from 2000 to 2009 (1920–2011)
- Imee Marcosb. 1955PHnot in their usual nameFilipina politician and former actress (born 1955)
- Josefa Idemb. 1964DEGerman-born Italian canoeist and politician
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 74 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 343K | #137 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 275K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 273K | #112 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 247K | #9 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 226K | #31 |
| VE Venezuela | asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996) | — | 28K | #44 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.1K | #112 |
| CL Chile | SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021) | 2021 | 1.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 240 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 15 | #1,771 |
| AR Argentina | datos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015) | 2015 | 6 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror) | 2015 | 6 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
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 Josefa mean, and where does it come from?
- Feminine of José Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- How do you pronounce Josefa?
- A machine transcription gives /xosefa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Josefa?
- In the etymology graph, Josefina, Josephine and Jody are forms of the same name in other languages; Pepita is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Josefa a male or female name?
- Josefa is a female 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.
- In which country does Josefa have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 275 thousand people named Josefa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled josefa.
- Where is Josefa most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Josefa is densest in Spain — about 1 in 221 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Josefa?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 274,653 people named Josefa in 2022, about 1 in 771 residents.
- How common is Josefa compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Josefa is the 92nd most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Josefa?
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/josefaThe 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, “Josefa” — the 92nd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.