Given name
Jehoshaphat
“Yahweh”·“to judge”
Jehoshaphat is a masculine given name from Hebrew.
Original Hebrewיהושפט
Meaning & origin
What it means
Jehoshaphat is built from elements meaning “Yahweh” and “to judge”.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
How it developed
From Hebrew יְהוֹשָׁפָט, built from Hebrew יהוה + שָׁפַט (shafát, “to judge”).
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 2019. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
In the Bible
In the Bible, the name Jehoshaphat appears in 2 Samuel 8:16, 1 Kings 4:3, 1 Kings 22:43-48 and 1 other passage.
- 2 Samuel 8:16
- 1 Kings 4:3
- 1 Kings 22:43-48
- Matthew 1:8
From biblical name research
Jehoshaphat through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 26
- 26 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 2023
- 9 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 2024. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Jehoshaphat’s family of names
In Scots usage, Jehoshaphat has a conventional equivalent in the Portuguese form Josafá. In English usage, Jehoshaphat has a conventional equivalent in the Polish form Jozafat.
Inner ring: spellings · middle: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 1
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Spellings & scripts 1
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 3
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
See also 5
Names our sources mention alongside this one. They are related in story or meaning, not forms of this name.
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