Zena

Where Zena comes from

Zena hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #679 among girls — 7 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1883
    Peak, #536
    13 babies named Zena — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1885
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births.
  4. 1926
    Zena Marshall born
    British actress
  5. 1987
    Zena Cardman born
    American geobiologist and NASA astronaut
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Zena Marshall · British actress, 1926–2009
  • Zena Cardman · American geobiologist and NASA astronaut, born 1987
  • Zena Keefe · American actress, 1896–1976
  • Zena Dare · British actress and singer, 1887–1975
  • Zena Walker · English actress, 1934–2003

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.