Joas is a biblical form related to Joash, from Hebrew, meaning 'Yahweh has given.'
Joas is the Dutch and Portuguese rendering of the Hebrew biblical name Joash (יוֹאָשׁ), meaning "Yahweh has given" or, in some interpretations, "fire of Yahweh." The name appears multiple times in the Hebrew Bible, most prominently as the name of a king of Judah who reigned for forty years in the 9th century BCE. The young Joash was hidden in the Temple by the priest Jehoiada to protect him from Queen Athaliah's purge of the royal family — a narrative of dramatic rescue and providential survival that gave the name an aura of divine protection in the Jewish and Christian traditions that followed.
In Dutch Reformed Christianity, which spread from the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, Old Testament names were enthusiastically revived as a marker of scriptural piety and theological identity. Joas became a respected given name in the Netherlands, appearing in parish records across Holland and Zeeland, and traveling with Dutch settlers to South Africa, where it persists in Afrikaner communities today. In Brazil and Portugal, the variant form *Jó* (Job) is better known, but Joas appears as well, carrying its Dutch Reformed or Sephardic Jewish heritage depending on family lineage.
Joas has a clean, minimal quality that appeals to modern parents — two syllables, three consonants, no frills. It sits in productive company with similarly spare biblical names like Boas, Levi, and Ezra that have found renewed favor in the 21st century as parents seek names that feel both ancient and uncluttered.