Yosyf
The Ukrainian form of Joseph, from the Hebrew for "he will add". Most Poles have never met one: just 125 men carry it, and no boys have been given it in years.
Yosyf Pronunciation
Yosyf is pronounced ih-O-sihf (/ɨˈɔsɨf/).
What Yosyf means
Where Yosyf comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Yosyf is how Ukrainian speakers carry the biblical name Joseph. Its root is the Hebrew Yosef, tied to the sense "he will add," the wish that God would grant another child. In the Book of Genesis, Rachel gives the name to the son born after long years without one.
From scripture the name passed into Ukrainian church life and stayed there. Its best-documented bearer is Yosyf Slipyj (1892 to 1984), the Greek Catholic archbishop who spent eighteen years in Soviet camps before Rome made him a cardinal. His name outlasted the sentence meant to erase him.
Ukraine kept the older spelling.
On a Polish class register, Yosyf sits beside the home-grown Józef, close in sound yet plainly its own form. The two trace back to one Hebrew grandfather. The Polish gloss holds the same promise, bóg pomnoży, God will multiply, a reading that grows from the name's grammar rather than from later legend. Yosyf still means, simply, he will add.
How many people are named Yosyf
1 in 170770 men in Poland is named Yosyf. 125 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3008 among male names.
Yosyf as a middle name
Yosyf is a first name for 125 men in Poland and a middle name for another 2, a 98/2 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 9097th, between Yossi (2) and Yosyp (2).
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#9095 Yoshua2
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#9096 Yossi2
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#9097 Yosyf2
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#9098 Yosyp2
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#9099 Youri2