Zenon
A Greek name meaning either "gift of Zeus" or "stranger, foreigner".
Name Census estimates that about 888 living Americans carry the first name Zenon. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Zenon today is around 39 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Zenon births was 1954 (23 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Zenon. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
People living today
888
~ 1 in 385,985 Americans
Peak year
1954
23 babies that year
Average age
39
years old
2024 SSA rank
#5,217
Tracked since 1910
Popularity
Zenon: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Zenon from the 1910s through to the 2020s, spanning 12 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1950s, with 168 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 1950s peak, Zenon remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Zenon by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Zenon during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Zenons live
The SSA's state-level files cover 6 states and territories. New York, Texas, California recorded the most babies named Zenon, while Ohio, Michigan, Illinois recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 15 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Zenon
The name Zenon has its origins in Ancient Greek, derived from the word "zenon" meaning "gift of Zeus." It gained popularity during the Classical period in Greece, around the 5th century BCE.
One of the earliest known individuals with this name was Zenon of Elea, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived around 490-430 BCE. He is renowned for his paradoxes that challenged conventional notions of space and time.
Another notable figure was Zenon of Citium, a Hellenistic philosopher from Cyprus who lived from around 336-264 BCE. He founded the Stoic school of philosophy, which emphasised virtue, reason, and self-control.
In the early Christian era, Saint Zenon was a 4th-century bishop of Verona, Italy, who is venerated as a martyr and patron saint of several Italian towns.
During the Byzantine Empire, Zenon (also spelled Zeno) was the name of an emperor who ruled from 474-491 CE. He oversaw the reunification of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires for a brief period.
Zenon also has a connection to ancient Persia, as Zenon of Kaunos was a Greek engineer who served under King Darius I in the 5th century BCE. He is credited with constructing the first known arched bridge, the Kaunokan Bridge, in modern-day Turkey.
Other notable individuals with this name include Zenon Krakovsky (1863-1926), a Polish painter and art theorist, and Zenon Konstantynowicz (1908-1967), a Polish mathematician known for his contributions to functional analysis.
The name Zenon has a rich historical legacy, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, religion, and politics, as well as connections to the Byzantine Empire and ancient Persia. Its meaning as a "gift of Zeus" reflects the reverence for the chief deity in Greek mythology.
People
Zenon + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Zenon as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with Z
Other first names starting with Z with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Zenon: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Zenon?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 888 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Zenon going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 385,985 US residents.
Is Zenon a common name?
We classify Zenon as "Very Rare". It ranks above 89.3% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 1,261 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Zenon most popular?
The single biggest year for Zenon was 1954, when 23 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Zenon is about 39 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
Is Zenon a male name?
Yes, 100.0% of people registered as Zenon in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.