Tenzin
The boy's name Tenzin has been in the national records since 1992, with 2,906 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,230th. About 2,900 Tenzins are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tenzin boys named Tenzin
Girls and boys called Tenzin
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,253 girls and 1,653 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 36 to 63.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 28 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,906
- Estimated living today
- 2,900
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2014
- Best rank
- 1,751st
- Rank in 2025
- 2,230th
- First recorded
- 1992
- Girls / boys
- 1,253 / 1,653
How old the living Tenzins are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,906 babies given the name since 1992, about 2,900 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 2,100 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Tibetan
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Tenzins
- Tenzin Gyatso (born 1935)14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibetans
- Tenzin Palmo (born 1943)Tibetan Buddhist nun
- tulku tenzin delek (1950–2015)Tibetan Lama
People named Tenzin with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tenzin is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tenzin is most concentrated in Minnesota (9.3×), New York (9.0×), Connecticut (1.2×), California (1.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2014
The most popular boys’ names the year Tenzin peaked:
Tenzin elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland boys | Tenzin | 500 | 200th |
| Switzerland girls | Tenzin | 399 | 171st |
| France boys | Tenzin | 350 | 1,085th |
| France girls | Tenzin | 265 | 1,138th |
| Belgium boys | Tenzin | 245 | 463rd |
| Belgium girls | Tenzin | 207 | 509th |
| England and Wales boys | Tenzin | 95 | 2,556th |
| England and Wales girls | Tenzin | 51 | 3,695th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Tenzin: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Tenzin | 459 | 0.037% | 157th |
| German girls | Switzerland | Tenzin | 350 | 0.028% | 142nd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Tenzin | 47 | 0.011% | 267th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Tenzin | 38 | 0.009% | 353rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Tenzin | 3 | 0.005% | 203rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Tenzin | 2 | 0.003% | 191st |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Tenzin is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.08% of children were given it – 251 of them.
Tenzin: rank by region
In 2025, Tenzin was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Tenzin | 753 | 6 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Tenzin appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (326th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Related names
Tenzin against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.