Josten
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from the personal name Jost
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈdʒɑsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Josten is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 838K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 29K
- BEBelgium1 in 75K
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 Josten 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 103 (measured from records)
- 1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)
397 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Joesten in US United States, JM Jamaica, AO Angola.
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)
patronymic from the personal name Jost.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Josten 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 397 | 1 in 838K | 419 | Joesten | 93 |
| NO Norway | 188 | 1 in 29K | 188 | Josten | 7 |
| NL Netherlands | 177 | 1 in 98K | 177 | Josten | 15 |
| BE Belgium | 156 | 1 in 75K | 156 | Josten | 13 |
| AO Angola | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 211K | — | Joesten | 1 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 229K | — | Joesten | 1 |
397 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling josten. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Werner Jostenb. 1885DEGerman composer (1885-1963)
- Heinrich Jostenb. 1893BEGerman supervisor of Auschwitz concentration camp
- Kurt Jostenb. 1912DEhistorian of science and museum curator
- Johann Peter Jostenb. 1915DEpolitician (1915-2011)
- Günther Jostenb. 1921DEGerman World War II fighter pilot and Bundeswehr officer (1921–2004)
- Gerhard Jostenb. 1938DEGerman painter and writer
- Michael Jostenb. 1953DEGerman tax advisor and entrepreneur
- Husch Jostenb. 1969DEGerman journalist
- George Jostenb. 1986USAmerican soccer player
- Walter Jostenfilm producer
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 32 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 419 | #47,575 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 397 | #52,267 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 379 | #57,938 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 188 | #8,411 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 177 | #11,717 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 156 | #10,626 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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 Josten mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from the personal name Jost. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Josten?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdʒɑsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Josten have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 397 people named Josten, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joesten.
- Where is Josten most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Josten is densest in Norway — about 1 in 29 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Josten?
- In the United States, the national register counted 397 people named Josten in 2010, about 1 in 838 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Josten?
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/jostenThe 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, “Josten”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.