Zaynab
Zaynab is a girl's name that peaked in 2016, when it was the 1,541st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,484th. About 2,500 Zaynabs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Zaynab
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,509
- Estimated living today
- 2,500
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 1,541st
- Rank in 2025
- 1,484th
- First recorded
- 1982
How old the living Zaynabs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,509 babies given the name since 1982, about 2,500 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 1,900 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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 Arabic
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Zaynabs
- Zaynab bint Jahsh (592–642)cousin and seventh wife of Muhammad (c. 590–641)
- Zaynab bint Khuzayma (595–625)Muhammad's fifth wife (c. 596–625)
- Zaynab Alkali (born 1950)Nigerian novelist. She is also a poet and short story writer, recognized as the first female novelist in Northern Nigeria.
- Zaynab Fawwaz (1844–1914)women's rights activist and writer
- Zaynab Dosso (born 1999)Italian athletics competitor
- Zaynab Dayibekova (born 2002)Uzbekistani fencer
People named Zaynab with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Zaynab is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Zaynab is most concentrated in New York (2.8×), Michigan (2.6×), Minnesota (2.2×), New Jersey (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular girls’ names the year Zaynab peaked:
Zaynab elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Zaynab | 3,871 | 271st |
| France girls | Zaynab | 2,115 | 334th |
| Belgium girls | Zaynab | 455 | 291st |
| Scotland girls | Zaynab | 85 | 321st |
| Switzerland girls | Zaynab | 36 | 1,013th |
| Ireland girls | Zaynab | 18 | 629th |
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.
Zaynab: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Zaynab | 18 | 0.001% | 920th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Zaynab | 18 | 0.004% | 517th |
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.
Zaynab: rank by region
In 2025, Zaynab was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Zaynab | 531 | 9 |
| Wallonia | Zaynab | 452 | 5 |
| Brussels | Zaynab | 74 | 13 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Zaynab appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (74th) and 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.
Zaynab by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 7 | 494th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Zaynab among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Zaynab | 31 | 34 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Zaynab lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 629 women called Zaynab were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ceuta | Zaynab | 12 | 0.290 | 475 |
| Melilla | Zaynab | 11 | 0.254 | 532 |
| Tarragona | Zaynab | 39 | 0.089 | 910 |
| Girona | Zaynab | 36 | 0.087 | 893 |
| Almería | Zaynab | 29 | 0.077 | 965 |
| Ávila | Zaynab | 6 | 0.075 | 825 |
Listed in 26 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 26 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Zaynab 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.