Zoya
- Pronunciation
- [Zoy-a]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Life.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Zoya
Zoya is a name carrying the meaning "life," closely related to the Greek zoe and widely used across Slavic, Russian, and South Asian communities, where it is cherished for its bright, vital sense. The same root that gives us the word for life lends Zoya an uplifting, hopeful character, and its crisp opening Z gives it a striking, modern edge. The name's broad cross-cultural reach has helped it feel both exotic and instantly approachable wherever it is heard.
With its two clean syllables and energetic sound, Zoya fits naturally among the wave of short, vowel-rich girls' names that have surged in recent years. It reads as fresh and international, easy to say across languages while keeping a distinctive flair that sets it apart from more common choices — a name that manages to be at once globally familiar and pleasingly unusual on an American roster.
In the United States, Zoya first entered the Social Security top-1000 in 2020 and reached its best rank of #792 in 2022, standing at #976 in 2024 after accounting for roughly 1,484 births across that span. That recent arrival to the charts marks Zoya as a name very much of the present moment — a meaningful, globally resonant choice riding the current taste for crisp, lively, and internationally minded names that travel easily across cultures.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Zoya
US Popularity History (2020–2024)
Annual US births named Zoya by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2022 with 358 girls named Zoya (girl rank #792 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2024, ranked #976 for girls (266 US births). That's 184 places below its 2022 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Zoya Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Zoya the strongest states are Connecticut, Oregon, Virginia.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connecticut | #472 | 21 |
| 2 | Oregon | #546 | 21 |
| 3 | Virginia | #621 | 128 |
| 4 | New York | #629 | 262 |
| 5 | Washington | #660 | 88 |
| 6 | Maryland | #682 | 60 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #724 | 44 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #730 | 47 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #732 | 79 |
| 10 | California | #765 | 359 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #1,006 | 32 |
| 2 | Texas | #903 | 136 |
| 3 | Michigan | #874 | 39 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #841 | 49 |
| 5 | Illinois | #813 | 92 |
| 6 | California | #765 | 359 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #732 | 79 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #730 | 47 |
| 9 | Massachusetts | #724 | 44 |
| 10 | Maryland | #682 | 60 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Zoya in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Zoya?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Zoya to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Zoya against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).