Yusuf
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Turkish: a male given name from Hebrew, equivalent to English Joseph
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jus̪uf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Yusuf is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 24th most common given name.
- TRTürkiye1 in 156(measured from records)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 277
- SYSyria≈1 in 497
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 Yusuf 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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- #354 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 328 (measured from records)
- 1 in 156 (inferred from the name graph)
≈770,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Türkiye
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Yousef in EG Egypt, KW Kuwait, SA Saudi Arabia and 1 more.
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 the Arabic male personal name Yusuf, the prophet Joseph.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Yusuf is read(measured from records)
Yusuf is one spelling over 2 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.
- Turkish77%
a male given name from Hebrew, equivalent to English Joseph
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English5.4%
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Yusuf 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #24 | ≈770,000 est. | ≈1 in 277 | — | Yusuf | 137 |
| TR Türkiye | #18 | 526,127 | 1 in 156 | 526K | Yusuf | 173 |
| EG Egypt | #106 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Yousef | 139 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #57 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 843 | — | Yousef | 163 |
| SY Syria | #28 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 497 | — | Yusuf | 60 |
| JO Jordan | #67 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 331 | — | Yousef | 126 |
| KW Kuwait | #30 | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 372 | — | Yousef | 136 |
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: TÜİK NIP — most used given 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)
Yusuf is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swahili, Swahili/Muslim: ‘the beautiful’ or ‘he shall increase’; biblical Joseph
as a nameAfrican Names
In Arabic, Arabic form of Joseph, the Qur'anic prophet.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
In Arabic, Qur'anic sura title; the prophet Joseph.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
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)
- Youssef ibn Tashfinb. 1009MAnot in their usual nameleader of the Almoravid dynasty (r. 1061–1106), founder of Marrakech and a key figure in consolidating power in southern Morocco before expanding into Al-Andalus
- Al-Mustanjidb. 1124IQnot in their usual namethe Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad from 1160 to 1170
- Baha ad-Din Shoiebb. 1145IQnot in their usual nameKurdish historian and scholar, biographer of Saladin (1145–1234)
- Yusof bin Ishakb. 1910SGnot in their usual name1st President of Singapore (1910–1970)
- Yusuf Luleb. 1912UGfourth president of Uganda (1912–1985)
- Yousaf Raza Gillanib. 1952PKnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Pakistan from 2008 to 2012
- Yusuf Dikeçb. 1973TRTurkish sport shooter (born 1973)
- Yousef Sweidb. 1976ILnot in their usual nameArab-Israeli actor of Palestinian descent
- Yusuf Yazıcıb. 1997TRTurkish association football player (born 1997)
- YusufEGprophet and son of Jacob in Islam
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 111 sources across 53 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — most used given names | 2025 | 526K | #8 |
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — newborn names | 2025 | 4.6K | #4 |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Where does the name Yusuf come from?
- From the Arabic male personal name Yusuf, the prophet Joseph. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Yusuf?
- In the etymology graph, Jose, Joseph and Joe are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Yusuf mean?
- In Turkish, a male given name from Hebrew, equivalent to English Joseph
- How do you pronounce Yusuf?
- A machine transcription gives /jus̪uf/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- In which country does Yusuf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 773 thousand people named Yusuf in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yusuf.
- Where is Yusuf most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Yusuf is densest in Türkiye — about 1 in 156 people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- Is Yusuf a male or female name?
- Yusuf 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 Yusuf?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted 526,127 people named Yusuf in 2025, about 1 in 156 residents.
- How common is Yusuf compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Yusuf is the 24th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yusuf?
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/yusufThe 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, “Yusuf” — the 24th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.