Josephine
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Empress Josephine (1763–1814), wife of Napoleon; her real name was Josepha
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈdʒoʊsəˌfin/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Josephine is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country, where it is the 34th most common given name.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 380(inferred from the name graph)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 1.1K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.7K
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 Josephine 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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- #643 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 515 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 380 (inferred from the name graph)
≈290,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, 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)
From Empress Josephine (1763–1814), wife of Napoleon; her real name was Josepha.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Josephine is read(measured from records)
Josephine is one spelling over 3 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.
- English74%
Feminine form of Joseph; Hebrew
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Swahili6.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Josephine in Swahili.
- French5.6%
Forme féminine de Joseph; d'origine hébraïque, « Dieu ajoute ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
Josephine 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #34 | ≈290,000 est. | ≈1 in 380 | — | Josephine | 154 |
| NG Nigeria | #227 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Josephine | 107 |
| US United States | #325 | 123,986 | 1 in 2.7K | 124K | Josephine | 515 |
| GB United Kingdom | #272 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 12 | Josephine | 263 |
| ES Spain | — | 36,842as Josefina | 1 in 1.4K | 40K | Josephine | 78 |
| SE Sweden | #429 | 19,274as Josefine | 1 in 529 | 19K | Josephine | 88 |
| DK Denmark | #318 | 9,410as Josefine | 1 in 624 | 9.4K | Josephine | 128 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Josephine is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, From Empress Josephine (1763–1814), wife of Napoleon; her real name was Josepha.
as a nameIrish first names
From French Joséphine, a feminine equivalent of Joseph formed with the diminutive suffix -ine. It is now widely used in the English-speaking world. Short form: Jo. Pet form: Josie.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Hebrew, 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…
English form of JOSÉPHINE , now widely adopted in the English-speaking world. Cognates: Irish Gaelic: Seosaimhín. Italian: Giuseppina. Short form: English: Jo. Pet forms: English: Josie, Josette, FIFI , POSY .
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)
- Joséphine de Beauharnaisb. 1763FREmpress consort of the French from 1804 to 1814 (1763-1814)
- Josephine of Leuchtenbergb. 1807SEQueen of Sweden and Norway from 1844 to 1859
- Clara Schumannb. 1819DEnot in their usual nameGerman musician and composer (1819–1896)
- Clara Zetkinb. 1857DEnot in their usual nameCommunist activist, and advocate for women's rights (1857–1933)
- Estée Lauderb. 1906USnot in their usual nameAmerican businesswoman (1906–2004)
- Joséphine Bakerb. 1906USAmerican-born French dancer, singer and actress (1906–1975)
- Josephine Chaplinb. 1949FRAmerican actress (1949–2023)
- Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästriklandb. 1982SEnot in their usual nameyoungest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden
- Anya Taylor-Joyb. 1996USnot in their usual nameactress (born 1996)
- Josephine Langfordb. 1997AUAustralian 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)
Attested in 108 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 124K | #459 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5.4K | #585 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5.4K | #131 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 4.1K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 2.7K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 540 | #2,039 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 525 | #4,416 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 195 | #459 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 12 | #295 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 8 | #205 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 5 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Josephine mean, and where does it come from?
- From Empress Josephine (1763–1814), wife of Napoleon; her real name was Josepha. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Josephine a male or female name?
- Josephine 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.
- What are other forms of the name Josephine?
- In the etymology graph, Josefina, Josefa and Jody are forms of the same name in other languages; Jo and Josie are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Josephine have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 288 thousand people named Josephine in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled josephine.
- How common is the name Josephine?
- In the United States, the national register counted 123,986 people named Josephine in 2020, about 1 in 2.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Josephine compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Josephine is the 34th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Josephine?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdʒoʊsəˌfin/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Josephine?
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/josephineThe 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, “Josephine” — the 34th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.