Joshuah is a spelling variant of Joshua, from Hebrew, meaning "God is salvation."
Joshuah is a variant spelling of one of the Hebrew Bible's most consequential names. The standard form, Joshua, derives from the Hebrew Yehoshua — a compound of Yahweh (the divine name) and yasha, meaning 'to save' or 'to deliver.' The name means, in essence, 'God is salvation,' and it was the name of the man chosen to lead the Israelites into Canaan after Moses died — a warrior-prophet whose book of the Bible is one of the Old Testament's most dramatic.
The Greek form of the name, Iesous, passed into Latin as Iesus: Joshua and Jesus are, etymologically, the same name. The added 'h' in Joshuah is an archaic or variant spelling found in older English texts and some genealogical records, giving the name a slightly antique dignity. In the nineteenth century, variant spellings were common before orthography standardized, and names like Joshuah, Isaah, and Elijah often appeared interchangeably in parish registers.
Reviving this spelling today signals a preference for the old and the distinctive — a name that wears history lightly but wears it visibly. As Joshua, the name has been a perennial top-ten fixture in English-speaking countries since the 1970s. Joshuah, by contrast, is vanishingly rare, which gives it a double life: immediately recognizable yet genuinely unusual. For parents who love the name's biblical depth and linguistic history but want to step slightly outside the crowd, the variant spelling offers a quiet, subtle form of individuality.