Origin
According to the Torah, the tribe consisted of descendants of Manasseh, a son of Joseph, from whom it took its name. Some critics, however, view this as a postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation In the Biblical account, Joseph is one of the two children of Rachel and Jacob, a brother to Benjamin, and father to both Ephraim, and his first son, Manasseh; Ephraim received the blessing of the firstborn, although Manasseh was the eldest, because Jacob foresaw that Ephraim's descendants would be greater than his brother's.
Though the biblical descriptions of the geographic boundary of the House of Joseph are fairly consistent, the descriptions of the boundaries between Manasseh and Ephraim are not, and each is portrayed as having exclaves within the territory of the other. Furthermore, in the Blessing of Jacob, and elsewhere ascribed by textual scholars to a similar or earlier time period, (e.g., Joshua 17:14-18) Ephraim and Manasseh are treated as a single tribe, with Joseph appearing in their place. From this it is regarded that originally Ephraim and Manasseh were considered one tribe - that of Joseph.
Read more about this topic: Tribe Of Manasseh
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