Jose

At the 2020 census, 12,633 Americans bore the surname Jose — 2,777th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 23,700.

By the numbers

People: 12,633
Rank: 2,777th
How common: 1 in 23,700
Per 100,000: 4.2

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

From Spanish/Portuguese José, from Hebrew.

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

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Jose described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 41.9%
Hispanic or Latino 36.1%
White, not Hispanic 12.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 4.5%
Black, not Hispanic 3.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.2%

Notable people called Jose

Willian José (born 1991)Brazilian association football player
Jaclyn Jose (1963–2024)Filipino actress
José Carlos da Silva José (1941–2025)Portuguese footballer
Julie Anne San Jose (born 1994)Filipino singer
Edward José (1865–1930)Belgian film director, actor
Beñat San José (born 1979)Spanish football manager
No Way Jose (born 1988)Dominican-American professional wrestler

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

Surnames like Jose

Also a first name

Jose has been given to 596,732 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2002. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.