Zili
given name · Latin script
Meaning: shadow, shade
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ziɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zili is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 53K(inferred from the name graph)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 347K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 625K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 84 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 53K (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
shadow, shade
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zili 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Zili | 64 |
| US United States | 215 | 1 in 1.5M | 139 | Zili | 84 |
| TW Taiwan | ≈33 est. | ≈1 in 717K | — | Zili | 6 |
| BR Brazil | 26 | 1 in 8.1M | 718 | — | — |
| CA Canada | ≈24 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | — | Zili | 16 |
| HK Hong Kong | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 347K | — | Zili | 12 |
| SG Singapore | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 625K | — | Zili | 5 |
| EE Estonia | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 705K | listed | — | — |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex. 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)
Zili 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.
Thanga: male name
as a nameAfrican Names
In Latvian, nominative masculine plural of zils
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, accusative singular of zil
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Albanian, jealousy
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Zaļesjes pagasta apdzīvotās vietas "Ziļi" nosaukums latgaliski
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Jakob Zilib. 1481CH(1481-1563)
- Caspar Zilib. 1717CH(1717-1758)
- Georg Leonhard Zilib. 1774CH(1774-1860)
- Ridha Zilib. 1943TNTunisian photographer and poet (1943–2011)
- Mounir ZiliFRPh.D. Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie - Paris VI 1996
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 718 | #12,338 |
Reference works 2
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Zili mean, and where does it come from?
- shadow, shade Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Zili?
- A machine transcription gives /ziɫi/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- Is Zili a male or female name?
- Zili is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Zili have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Zili in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zili.
- How common is the name Zili?
- In the United States, the national register counted 215 people named Zili in 2020, about 1 in 1.5 million residents.
What do you want to know about Zili?
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/ziliThe 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), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Zili”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.