Josiah
Meaning of Josiah
Josiah (English “jo-SY-uh”) springs from the ancient Hebrew Yoshiyahu—“the Lord heals” or, in lyrical shorthand, “God’s got your back”—and sashays through history on the sandal-clad feet of the reform-minded King Josiah of Judah, who swept idols away like a brisk Mumbai monsoon. In today’s nursery roll call, he’s no wallflower; his U.S. ranking has rock-climbed from obscurity in the ’80s to a sturdy Top-60 perch, proving that parents can’t resist a name that sounds like sunshine bottled in a diya at Diwali. Josiah feels both vintage and vivacious—biblical backbone with a bhangra beat—so a little one bearing it is primed to flash a ready grin, champion lost causes, and turn even mundane moments into masala-flavored adventures.
Pronunciation
American English
- Pronunced as jo-SY-uh (/dʒoʊˈsaɪə/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
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Notable People Named Josiah
| Josiah Willard Gibbs was an American engineer and scientist who transformed physical chemistry with thermodynamics, co-founded statistical mechanics, and pioneered modern vector calculus. |
| Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter and abolitionist who founded Wedgwood in 1759 and led the industrialization of European pottery. |
| Josiah Warren was an American social reformer and polymath. |
| Born enslaved in Maryland, Josiah Henson escaped to Canada in 1830, became an author, abolitionist, and minister, founded the Dawn settlement and school for fugitives, and is widely seen as the inspiration for Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. |
| Josiah Leavitt was a Massachusetts physician and inventor who left medicine to become one of the earliest pipe organ makers in the United States. |
| Josiah Calvin McCracken was an American athlete in football and track and field. |
| Sir Josiah Child was an English economist, merchant, and politician, a leading mercantilist who governed the East India Company and led it through the Anglo-Mughal War. |
| American novelist, essayist, and poet Josiah Gilbert Holland guided the nation after the Civil War and became the late 1800s leading man of letters, outselling Mark Twain in his lifetime. |
| Josiah A.P. Campbell - Josiah Abigail Patterson Campbell was a Mississippi lawyer and politician who served as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, Speaker of the Mississippi House, and a deputy to the Confederate Provisional Congress in 1861 to 1862. |
| Josiah Tattnall was a Georgia planter soldier and statesman who fought in the Revolution served as a US senator governed Georgia and helped undo the Yazoo land fraud. |
| Josiah Parsons Cooke was a pioneering Harvard chemist whose atomic weight research inspired Theodore William Richards and foreshadowed the periodic law. |
| Josiah Flint Willard was an American dairy farmer, naturalist, and businessman from Janesville, Wisconsin, who served one term as a Free Soiler in the Wisconsin State Assembly and was the father of suffragist Frances Willard. |
| Josiah Emery was an 18th century watch and clockmaker who improved the lever escapement in 1785 and crafted watches for Lord Nelson and King George III. |
| Josiah Goddard was an American Baptist missionary who served in China. |
| Josiah Parkes was an English civil engineer best known for inventing a deep drainage system. |
