Josephine is the French feminine of Joseph — from the Hebrew Yosef, meaning "God will add" or "God will increase." The name developed in France in the 18th century and was made famous by Empress Joséphine (1763-1814), first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Josephine has been in the U.S.
Josephine does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Josephine reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.