Joshua
Meaning of Joshua
Joshua—breathed softly as “JAH-shoo-uh,” like wind slipping through a bamboo grove—traces its roots to the ancient Hebrew Yehōshua, “Yahweh is salvation,” a promise carried on the lips of the biblical leader who guided Israel beyond the Jordan as dawn crimsoned the desert sky. Over centuries the name journeyed westward, its syllables polished smooth by prayer and lullaby alike, until English tongues embraced it fully; and in the United States, it rose like a carp leaping a waterfall, vaulting from the lower ranks of the late 1960s to a radiant crest within the nation’s top five from the mid-1980s through the early 2000s, before gliding to its present, still-lofty perch in the fifties. In Japanese imagination, Joshua can feel akin to a silent torii gate—steady, red against mist—inviting the spirit toward courage and renewal; yet it also echoes the brush-stroke grace of 筆 (fude) ink describing a single, decisive arc. The name carries a cool quietude beneath its heroic history: a sense of calm leadership, loyalty, and gentle humorless strength, like moonlight reflecting off a katana’s edge. For parents seeking a moniker that marries ancient faith with contemporary poise, Joshua offers a path lit by enduring promise, its four flowing sounds both familiar and freshly alive, ready to cradle a newborn soul as surely as the first cherry blossoms cradle spring rain.
Pronunciation
American English
- Pronunced as JAH-shoo-uh (/ˈdʒɑʃuə/)
British English
- Pronunced as JAH-shoo-uh (/ˈdʒɒʃuə/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Joshua
| Joshua Taylor Bassett is an American actor and singer best known for starring as Ricky Bowen in Disney Plus High School Musical The Musical The Series and for his 2024 debut album The Golden Years. |
| Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a Maine professor and politician who volunteered for the Union Army, became a decorated brigadier general famed for his Gettysburg bayonet charge that earned the Medal of Honor. |
| Sir Joshua Reynolds was an influential 18th century English portrait painter, founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, champion of the Grand Style, knighted by George III, and widely hailed as a master who transformed British art. |
| Joshua Slocum, a Nova Scotian-born American seaman and writer, was the first to sail solo around the world, chronicled it in his 1900 bestseller Sailing Alone Around the World, and vanished at sea in 1909. |
| Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor, currently music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. |
| Joshua Carter Jackson is a Canadian American actor known for Dawson's Creek, Fringe, The Affair, and Dr. Death, which earned him a Critics Choice nomination. |
| Joshua Radin is an American singer songwriter with ten albums, known for his 2008 album Simple Times and songs featured in many films and TV shows. |
| British Parachute Regiment Colour Sergeant Joshua Mark Leakey received the Victoria Cross in 2015 for a 2013 Helmand raid, the only living British recipient for the Afghanistan war and the last to receive it from Queen Elizabeth II. |
| Joshua Redman is an American jazz saxophonist and composer, and the son of jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman. |
| Joshua Seftel is an Academy Award nominated director who began with an Emmy nominated film on Romanian orphans and later directed Stranger at the Gate, Taking on the Kennedys, and The Home Team. |
| Joshua Cooper Ramo is vice chairman and co chief executive of Kissinger Associates and the author of New York Times best selling nonfiction books The Age of the Unthinkable and The Seventh Sense. |
| Joshua Lincoln Oppenheimer is an American and British film director known for the Oscar nominated The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, a 2014 MacArthur Fellow who debuted The End in 2024. |
| Joshua Lloyd Wheeler, a U.S. Army Delta Force master sergeant, was killed in Iraq during Operation Inherent Resolve, becoming the first American killed by enemy fire while fighting ISIS and the first U.S. combat death in Iraq since November 2011. |
| Joshua Clottey is a Ghanaian former professional boxer who fought from 1995 to 2019, held the IBF welterweight title in 2008 to 2009, competed at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, and was famed for a durable chin that saw him never stopped in his five losses. |
| Joshua Johnson was a Baltimore painter of African and European ancestry, known for portraits of prominent Marylanders and their children and recognized as the earliest documented professional African American artist. |
