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Zena vs Zenith

American parents have registered 5,986 Zenas since 1880, against 875 Zeniths. Zena is still ahead, with 73 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zena against Zenith, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zena Zenith

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Zena has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Zena had 90 and Zenith had 82.

Side by side

  Zena Zenith
Total US births 5,986875
Most in one year 22282
Babies in 2025 7351
Estimated living today 4,300630
Median age today 354
Peak year 19642023
Best rank 689th girls4,999th girls
Rank in 2025 2,438th8,860th
First recorded 18801897
Girls / boys 5,986 / 0448 / 427

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Zenas alive today are over 35; half the Zeniths are over 4. That is 31 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Zena Zenith
England and Wales 49736

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Zena and Zenith.