boys:
9k births since 1900
#1241 (73rd percentile)
overall:
9k births since 1900
#2837 (63rd percentile)
The name Josef is the #2,837 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 9,048 recorded births since 1900. This represents the 63.3% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 63.3% of all names). For boys, it ranks #1,241 (72.9% percentile) for all time with 9,048 births since 1900.
Josef first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1900 (first recorded for boys in 1900). Birth data for Josef is available in 120 out of the 124 years between 1900 and 2023. The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
For boys, Josef reached its peak popularity in 1999, achieving the 26.2% percentile (ranked #594) with 108 births per million. The name was most common in 1999, with 108 births per million (ranked 26.2% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2002, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Josef ranks #855 for boys (6.2% percentile) with 33 births per million, which is 30.9% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Josef".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Joseph. View all variations of Joseph.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Josef", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 16 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Joseph" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Joseph..
Our model has identified 8 different pronunciations for the name Josef. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 28.8% confident that Josef is pronounced as JOH-zehf, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is JOH-suhf, at 13.5% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Josef? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Josef. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Josef, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like JH OW1 Z EH0 F) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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