Zoya

Where Zoya comes from

Zoya 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. 1923
    Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya born
    Soviet resistance member of World War II and Heroine of the Soviet Union
  2. 1963
    First appearance
    #6,592 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  3. 1972
    Zoya Akhtar born
    Indian film director
  4. 2022
    Peak, #789
    358 babies named Zoya — more than any year before or since.
In the dictionary

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

Namesakes
  • Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya · Soviet resistance member of World War II and Heroine of the Soviet Union, 1923–1941
  • Zoya Akhtar · Indian film director, born 1972
  • Zoya Fyodorova · Soviet-Russian actress, 1909–1981
  • Zoya Voskresenskaya · Russian / Soviet author and diplomat, 1907–1992
  • Zoya Afroz · Indian Model and actress, born 1994

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.