Boy Names Starting With Z

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin Z boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common Z names are

1.2% of the births in the 2025 boys' top 1,000 went to a name starting with Z — 23 names in all, giving the initial the 20th-largest share among the 26 initials. From Zion at overall #142 (2,496 births) down to Zaccai, the 50th name, at #1,865 (85), the first count on the table is 29.4 times the last.

That 1.2% is Z's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 23-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

Z names across the decades

Z has no boy name inside the top 200 in 1955 and 1965; the first snapshot with one is 1975, when Zachary (#145) charted. The high of 2 is shared by 1995 and 2015, so the last snapshot, 2015, sits at that high, led by Zachary (#88). Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 1 Z name, led by Zion at #142. Zachary is the leading Z name in every snapshot where the letter appears in the top 200 (5 of 7). No name on the 2025 Z table appears in all 7 snapshot top-200 lists.

Z names held 0.00% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 0.62% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 0.28%. The first-letter trends guide sets Z's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

Set the 2025 table against the 7 snapshots and 1 name drops out — each inside a snapshot's top 200, none on this year's top 50: Zachery (1995, best #198 in 1995). The years in parentheses are the snapshot years whose top 200 included the name; the most recent of them to chart is Zachery, in 1995.

Of the 50 names above, 48 appear in none of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: the first 12 by rank are Zion (#142), Zayn (#253), Zyaire (#317), Zane (#324), Zander (#397), Zayne (#473), Zaire (#503), Zachariah (#538), Zakai (#563), Zain (#567), Zaiden (#609), and Zayd (#633), and the remaining 36 follow in the table above.

Absence is relative to the committed depth: the snapshot files stop at rank 200 and the 2025 letter file stops at Z's 50th name (#1,865), so a faded name may still be registered in 2025 below that point, and a newcomer may have been registered in a snapshot year below rank 200.

Shape of the list

By the generator's length classes, the 50 names on the 2025 table split into 15 short spellings of four letters or fewer (Zion, for one), 30 medium spellings of five to seven (Zayden, for one), and 5 long spellings of eight or more (Zachariah, for one). The longest spellings on the 2025 list, at 9 letters, are Zachariah, Zechariah, and Zephaniah; the shortest, at 3, are Zev and Zen.

By popularity tier, the list holds 0 top-10 names, 0 more inside the top 100, 8 in the 101–500 band, and 15 in the 501–1,000 band; 27 sit past #1,000, outside the top-1,000 list the generator's 2025 era draws from.

Both sexes' 2025 Z lists carry 1 of the same spelling, ranked once per sex: Zion (#142 for boys, #2,035 for girls). 32 of the 50 spellings on the 2025 list open Za-, the letter's most common second letter, ahead of Ze- (9), and 6 different second letters appear across the list.

Z boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with Z.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.