Zoe

zoh-ee

Greek

"life"

Zoe Origin and Meaning

The name Zoe is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "life".

The history of Zoe begins in the third century when the Alexandrian Jews translated Eve, which means 'life,' to the Greek equivalent Zoe. Zoe was in use as far back as the Roman classical period, and was popular with the early Christians, who bestowed it with hopes of eternal life, but it didn't migrate to the English-speaking world until the mid-nineteenth century. Alternate spellings include Zoey, Zoie, and Zooey.

Zoe is one of those surprising names that has been on the Top 1000 nearly every year since 1880, but it's just recently been zooming toward the top. As popular as it has ever been, Zoe still sounds distinctive. The phonetic Zoey spelling ranks even higher. All forms of the name are among the elite and appealing group of girl names that mean life.

Zoe Washbourne was a strong warrior in the sci-fi show Firefly, Zoe Hart the leading female character on Hart of Dixie, Zoe Barnes a journalist on House of Cards, and kids might recognize Zoe from Sesame Street.

Zoe is currently hot around the world, popular in countries from Scotland to Spain, France to New Zealand.

Zoe has spawned a number of variant spellings, most successful of which is Zoey, embraced by TV scripters--she has been seen on the Nickelodeon show Zoey 101, The West Wing and How I Met Your Mother. Zoie has also been adopted by enough parents to bring it into the Top 1000.

Wide-eyed actress Zooey Deschanel, whose first name is pronounced the same as Zoe, was named after Zooey Glass, the male protagonist of the J. D. Salinger novella Franny and Zooey.

• 38 US 2019
• 90 Nameberry 2021
• 96 England 2019
• 58 Scotland 2019
• 42 Ireland 2019
• 4 Netherlands 2019
• 63 Germany 2020
• 97 Sweden 2018
• 57 Spain 2019
• 21 New Zealand 2020
• 16 Australia 2019
• 6 Dogs 2019
• 51 2028 2028