Name José - meaning, origin, numerology

José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: in Spanish [xoˈse] and in Portuguese [ʒuˈzɛ] (or [ʒoˈzɛ]). In French, the name José, pronounced [ʒoˈze], is an old vernacular form of Joseph, which is also in current usage as a given name. José is also commonly used as part of male name composites, such as José Manuel, José Maria or Antonio José, and also in female name composites like Maria José or Marie-José. José is also a Flemish male given name, pronounced [ˈioːse], and for which the female written form is Josée as in French. In Dutch however, José is a female given name, and is pronounced [ˈioʊseɪ]; it may occur as part of name composites like Marie-José or as a female first name in its own right; it can also be short for the name Josina and even a Dutch hypocorism of the name Johanna.

In England, Jose is originally a Romano-Celtic surname, and people with this family name can usually be found in, or traced to, the English county of Cornwall, where it was especially frequent during the fourteenth century; this surname is pronounced /ˈdʒoʊz/, as in the English names Joseph or Josephine.

The common spelling of this proper name in different languages is a case of interlingual homography. Similar cases occur in English given names (Albert, Bertrand, Christine, Daniel, Eric, Ferdinand) that are not exclusive to the English language, and which can be found namely in French with a different pronunciation under exactly the same spelling. English speakers approximate the Spanish pronunciation [xoˈse] as /hoʊˈzeɪ/; with a [z] rather than with an [s] sound. In Castilian Spanish, moreover, the initial ⟨J⟩ is similar to the German ⟨ch⟩ in the name Bach and Scottish Gaelic and Irish ⟨ch⟩ in loch, though Spanish ⟨j⟩ varies by dialect, and in Mexican Spanish, for example, is closer to the English.

Historically, the modern pronunciation of the name José in Spanish is the result of the phonological history of Spanish coronal fricatives since the fifteenth century, when it departed from Old Spanish. Unlike today’s pronunciation of this name, in Old Spanish the initial ⟨J⟩ was a voiced postalveolar fricative (as the sound "je" in French), and the middle ⟨s⟩ stood for a voiced apicoalveolar fricative /z̺/ (as in the Castilian pronunciation of the ⟨s⟩ in the word mismo). These sounds, from a total of seven sibilants that were once shared by medieval Ibero-Romance languages, were partly preserved in Catalan, Galician, and Occitan, and have survived integrally in Mirandese and in the dialects of northern Portugal.

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Spanish form of Joseph, also borne by women as the second part of the compound name María José. As a male name, it is now also occasionally used in the English-speaking world.

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