Joshua

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Joshua boys named Joshua

By the numbers

Total US births

1,253,882

Estimated living today

1.2 million

Median age today

33

Peak year

1989

Best rank

4th

Rank in 2025

66th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

4,953 / 1,248,929

How old the living Joshuas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,253,882 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.2 million are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 174,000 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Hebrew

From Biblical Hebrew יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, perhaps from הוֹשֵׁעַ with addition of יהוה (“Yahweh”), thus meaning "Yahweh is salvation". See הוֹשִׁיעַ (“to save”). By cognate a direct equivalent to Jesus via Latin Iēsūs and Ancient Greek Ἰησοῦς from Aramaic יֵשׁוּע, akin to Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ, a variant of Yehoshúa<nowiki>'</nowiki>.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Joshuas

• Joshua Bassett (born 2000)American actor and singer-songwriter
• Joshua Kimmich (born 1995)German association football player
• Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)English painter
• Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008)American molecular biologist
• Joshua Kennedy (born 1982)Australian association football player
• Joshua Jackson (born 1978)Canadian actor
• Joshua Angrist (born 1960)Israeli-American economist
• Joshua Cheptegei (born 1996)Ugandan athletics competitor

People named Joshua with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Joshua is most common

• CA138,806
• TX100,900
• NY67,943
• FL62,075
• OH57,553
• PA50,917
• IL49,447
• MI44,695
• GA40,859
• NC40,784

Relative to how many babies each state records, Joshua is most concentrated in Alaska (1.9×), Nevada (1.7×), Wyoming (1.5×), Florida (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1989

The most popular boys’ names the year Joshua peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• David
• Daniel

All the names of 1989

Joshua elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Joshua: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Joshua is most concentrated in Basel-Landschaft, where 0.20% of children were given it – 107 of them.

Joshua: rank by region

In 2025, Joshua was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, Joshua was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Joshua appears in the lists for Province of Liège (147th) and Province of Antwerp (204th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Joshua by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Joshua among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Joshua lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,913 men called Joshua were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 41 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 11 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Joseph
• Jose
• Josephine
• Josiah
• Josie
• Josue
• Joselyn
• Josh
• Josefina
• Joslyn
• Josef
• Josette

Joshua against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Joshua vs Joseph
• Joshua vs Jose
• Joshua vs Josephine
• Joshua vs Josiah
• Joshua vs Josie
• Joshua vs Josue

Compare Joshua with a name of your own