Zainab
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Zainab is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 71st most common given name. Recorded meaning: a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives.
- BHBahrain≈1 in 335(inferred from the name graph)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 506
- KWKuwait≈1 in 783
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Zainab itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 272 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 335 (inferred from the name graph)
≈420,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bahrain, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Zeinab in EG Egypt, GE Georgia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives.
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zainab counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #71 | ≈420,000 est. | ≈1 in 506 | — | Zainab | 96 |
| AF Afghanistan | #41 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Zainab | 20 |
| EG Egypt | #202 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | listed | Zeinab | 108 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #184 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Zainab | 131 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 3.1K | Zainab | 36 |
| US United States | — | 9,692 | 1 in 34K | 9.7K | Zainab | 272 |
| BH Bahrain | #4 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 335 | — | Zainab | 70 |
| KW Kuwait | #53 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 783 | — | Zainab | 71 |
| GE Georgia | #247 | 3,072as ზეინაბ | 1 in 1.3K | 3.1K | Zeinab | 18 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Zainab is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Arabic, Prophet Muhammad’s daughter; also one of his wives
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
In Swedish, Zainab (m.fl. former) är ett arabiskt namn, lika med benämningen på en väldoftande blomma. Det är populärt i många länder med muslimsk befolkning, bl.a. eftersom en av profeten Muhammeds döttrar bar namnet.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Prophet Muhammad's daughter
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
ornament, wife of
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
Madre de los pobres
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Zaynab bint Jahshb. 592SAnot in their usual namecousin and seventh wife of Muhammad (c. 590–641)
- Zaynab bint Khuzaymab. 595SAnot in their usual nameMuhammad's fifth wife (c. 596–625)
- Zainab bint Muhammadb. 599SAEldest daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
- Zaynab Fawwazb. 1844LBnot in their usual namewomen's rights activist and writer
- Zainab Cobboldb. 1867GBBritish Muslim aristocrat
- Zainab al-Ghazalib. 1917EGEgyptian activist (1923-2005)
- Zainab Hawa Bangurab. 1959SLSierra Leonean politician
- Zainab Ahmedb. 1960NGNigerian politician
- Zainab Salbib. 1969USIraqi American author, women's rights activist
- Zainab Johnsonb. 2000USAmerican comedian
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 90 sources across 49 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9.7K | #2,511 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 338 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 40 | #2,511 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Zainab mean, and where does it come from?
- a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- Is Zainab a male or female name?
- Zainab is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Zainab?
- In the etymology graph, Zeynep, Zaynab and Seynabou are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Zainab have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 423 thousand people named Zainab in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zainab.
- How common is the name Zainab?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,692 people named Zainab in 2020, about 1 in 34 thousand residents.
- How common is Zainab compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Zainab is the 71st most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zainab?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/zainabThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Zainab” — the 71st most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.