Joey

Short for Joseph, and something else entirely

Joey is a diminutive, and the names it shortens are the ones beginning with J: Joseph most often, then Joe, Joshua, Josephine and Johanna. Our listing gives it as a term of endearment, which is fair. The name underneath is Joseph, from the Hebrew Yosef, usually translated "he will add" — a reference to the biblical story in which Rachel names her son in the hope of another.

The -ey ending is doing the work it does in Charlie and Mickey: turning a formal name into something you can say to a child or a dog. That is why the name reads as friendly rather than dignified, and it is why it has always been more common as a nickname than on a birth certificate.

The baby animal whose name has no known origin

The marsupial sense is separate and much stranger. A joey is the young of a marsupial — a kangaroo, a wallaby, a koala, an opossum — and the word is thoroughly established in Australian English. Its origin is not known. Older reference works say it comes from an Australian Aboriginal language and cite a form like joè; more recent work on Australian English, and on the Aboriginal languages themselves, says the origin is unknown and that the older attribution does not hold up.

That is worth stating plainly, because it is unusual: a word this common, in a language this well documented, with no etymology anybody will stand behind. There is one further clue. The Australian National Dictionary has citations for a joey meaning a young possum that predate the earliest citations for a young kangaroo, which suggests the word started with possums and moved.

The word has collected other senses since. In Australia it can mean a young child, and in British and Irish prison slang a joey is a parcel smuggled in to an inmate. Neither is relevant to a dog. They are evidence of how thoroughly the word settled in.

Joey as a dog name

JOH-ee. Two syllables, stress on the first, ending on a long -ee you can hold. There is nothing difficult anywhere in it — no cluster, no sound a child will miss, no ambiguity about where the stress goes. It is one of the easiest names a dog can be given.

The consequence of that ease is that it is common. Joey is a standard pet name in English-speaking countries, and it sits close to several others: Joe, Josie, Joey, Chloe, Zoe. Dogs separate names by the stressed vowel and the shape of the word, and Joey and Josie share both. In a house that already has a Josie, expect confusion.

The other thing Joey carries is the television association. For anyone who watched a certain American sitcom in the 1990s, Joey is a character before it is a name, and the catchphrase will be said to your dog for the rest of its life. Whether that is charming or tiresome is a decision only you can make.

See also: Joe · Josie · Joshua · Roo · Bindi

Common questions