Humanverse

Zenobia vs Zenon

American parents have registered 4,592 Zenobias since 1880, against 1,276 Zenons. Zenobia is still ahead, with 18 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zenobia against Zenon, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zenobia Zenon

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

Zenobia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Zenobia had 22 and Zenon had 21.

Side by side

  Zenobia Zenon
Total US births 4,5921,276
Most in one year 6223
Babies in 2025 1815
Estimated living today 2,800870
Median age today 4331
Peak year 19231954
Best rank 928th girls1,593rd boys
Rank in 2025 6,325th5,861st
First recorded 18811910
Girls / boys 4,592 / 00 / 1,276

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 Zenobias alive today are over 43; half the Zenons are over 31. That is 12 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 Zenobia Zenon
France 5420
Poland 2151
England and Wales 28103

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: Zenobia and Zenon.