Zen
About 3,313 American babies have been named Zen since 1969, most of them around 2022. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,141st. About 3,300 Zens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 6.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Zen boys named Zen
Girls and boys called Zen
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 595 girls and 2,718 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 43 to 185.
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
- 3,313
- Estimated living today
- 3,300
- Median age today
- 6
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 905th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,141st
- First recorded
- 1969
- Girls / boys
- 595 / 2,718
How old the living Zens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,313 babies given the name since 1969, about 3,300 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 2,700 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2019 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 Zen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Zen is most concentrated in Hawaii (4.1×), Florida (3.4×), California (2.8×), Georgia (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular boys’ names the year Zen peaked:
Zen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Zen | 334 | 1,108th |
| France boys | Zen | 25 | 4,750th |
| England and Wales girls | Zen | 20 | 3,598th |
| Belgium boys | Zen | 16 | 1,038th |
| Scotland boys | Zen | 7 | 337th |
| Ireland boys | Zen | 6 | 770th |
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.
Zen: rank by region
In 2010, Zen was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Zen | 871 | 5 |
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.
Zen 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 boys | Zen | 6 | 13 |
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.
Related names
Zen 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.