Zen — #958 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Zen

The Social Security Administration has registered 2,528 babies named Zen between 1969 and 2024, spanning 56 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Zen currently holds the #958 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2022, when 255 babies received it in a single year. Zen is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 552 additional births since 1998.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Zen performed strongest in the 2020s, accumulating 1,057 births during that ten-year window. Across the 6 decades of recorded activity, Zen shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 405 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and Florida. In total, SSA state-level files list Zen in 22 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Zen in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 2,528 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.