Zola

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Zola, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

• Zuri
• Xena
• Ziva
• Zelda
• Zadie

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Zola is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• French given name15 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in France, United States, Brazil, Angola

  Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

  Also written Zolá, Zolà, Żola, Zôla, Źoľa

• Polish given name4 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Poland, South Africa, United States, Ukraine

  Also written Żola, Zolà, Zolä

• a separate name4 spellings in the group

  Also written Zolá, Żola, Zolā

63 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Zola 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 English, surname used as given name; meaning not stated

  as a name·Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

• In Italian, redução popular de Anzola; também habitante de Zola Predosa

  as a name·Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

• In English, Emile, French writer

  as a name·Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

• English: apparently a late 20th-century creation, formed from the first syllable of ZOË with the ending - la common in female names. It coincides in form with the surname of the French novelist Émile Zola (1840–1902), who was of Italian descent, but it is unlikely that he had any influence on the popularity of the name.

  as a word

• In Italian, a habitational surname from several places of the name in Italy

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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.

• Zola Buddb. 1966ZASouth African competitive runner
• Zola Masekob. 1967SZSwazi film director
• Zola Williamsactor

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).

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

76 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 36 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Is Zola a male or female name?

Zola is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 2024) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB).

What does the name Zola mean, and where does it come from?

Congolese: 'productive'; Xhosa (South Africa): 'quietness' (male name). Recorded by African Names.

Which countries have the most people named Zola?

Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Zola in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zola. After it come Algeria, United States, Nigeria and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.

How common is the name Zola?

In the United States, the national register counted 3,216 people named Zola in 2020, about 1 in 103 thousand residents.

How common is Zola compared with other names?

In South Africa, Zola is the 911th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.