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Zenobia

The girl's name Zenobia has been in the national records since 1881, with 4,592 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 6,325th. About 2,800 Zenobias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 43.

Popularity, 1880–2025

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

girls named Zenobia

By the numbers

Total US births
4,592
Estimated living today
2,800
Median age today
43
Peak year
1923
Best rank
928th
Rank in 2025
6,325th
First recorded
1881

How old the living Zenobias are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 4,592 babies given the name since 1881, about 2,800 are alive — 62 in every hundred. Roughly 640 of them are children and 670 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1982 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 Ancient Greek

From name of a third century Queen of Palmyra. Ostensibly from Ζήνων, an ancient derivative of Ζεύς, but also suggested to be a rendering. First recorded as an English given name in Cornwall in 1586.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Zenobias

People named Zenobia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Zenobia is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Zenobia is most concentrated in Arkansas (9.8×), Louisiana (6.7×), New York (3.3×), South Carolina (2.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1923

The most popular girls’ names the year Zenobia peaked:

All the names of 1923

Zenobia elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Zenobia 28 4,838th
France girls Zenobia 5 1,382nd
Poland girls Zenobia 2 birth registrations 724th

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.

Related names

Zenobia against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Zenobia with a name of your own

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.