Zainab
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Zainab is a given name, most frequently recorded in Russia. In Bahrain it is the 4th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives.
- BHBahrain1 in 180◐
- KWKuwait1 in 428
- TJTajikistan1 in 579
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈19K ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 236 ●
- 1 in 1.3K ◐
across 6 countries
recorded for this name
231K records
Official registry-verified
Georgia
Spellings & scripts●
6 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Zeinab in EG Egypt, IR Iran, DE Germany and 2 more, Зайнаб in RU Russia, TJ Tajikistan, UZ Uzbekistan and 1 more, Заинаб in KZ Kazakhstan and Ზეინაბ in GE Georgia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives.
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #411 | 66,988 | 28K rec. | — | #228 | Зайнаб | 111 |
| NG Nigeria | #131 | 48,101 | 61K rec. | — | — | Zainab | 94 |
| EG Egypt | #308 | 17,395 | 7.4K rec. | — | listed | Zeinab | 102 |
| SY Syria | #253 | 14,374 | 15K rec. | — | — | Zainab | 21 |
| IQ Iraq | — | 11,056 | 10K rec. | — | — | Zainab | 46 |
| MY Malaysia | #471 | 10,470 | 3.9K rec. | — | 3.1K | Zainab | 39 |
| US United States | — | 9,652 | 28K rec. | 1 in 34K | 9.7K | Zainab | 236 |
| TR Türkiye | — | 8,022 | 7.6K rec. | — | — | Zainab | 16 |
| TJ Tajikistan | #63 | 7,209 | 83 rec. | — | 1.4K | Зайнаб | 8 |
| IN India | — | 7,047 | 3.3K rec. | — | 2 | Zainab | 80 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 6,111 | 4.1K rec. | — | 13 | Zainab | 126 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #194 | 5,496 | 2.1K rec. | — | — | Zainab | 125 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English75K21%
- Swahili58K16%
- Arabic54K15%
- Urdu34K9%
- Malay27K7%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 74,970 | 21% |
| Swahili | 58,451 | 16% |
| Arabic | 53,647 | 15% |
| Urdu | 34,008 | 9% |
| Malay | 26,866 | 7% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1957 | 4 |
| 1961 | 4 |
| 1962 | 4 |
| 1965 | 5 |
| 1966 | 5 |
| 1967 | 7 |
| 1970 | 6 |
| 1972 | 4 |
| 1974 | 9 |
| 1977 | 5 |
| 1979 | 5 |
| 1980 | 6 |
| 1981 | 9 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1984 | 7 |
| 1985 | 8 |
| 1986 | 10 |
| 1987 | 11 |
| 1988 | 10 |
| 1989 | 5 |
| 1990 | 5 |
| 1991 | 6 |
| 1992 | 9 |
| 1993 | 11 |
| 1994 | 9 |
| 1995 | 10 |
| 1996 | 13 |
| 1997 | 10 |
| 1998 | 5 |
| 1999 | 7 |
| 2000 | 12 |
| 2001 | 13 |
| 2002 | 6 |
| 2003 | 10 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2005 | 9 |
| 2006 | 8 |
| 2007 | 12 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2009 | 12 |
| 2010 | 18 |
| 2011 | 13 |
| 2012 | 12 |
| 2013 | 14 |
| 2014 | 12 |
| 2015 | 16 |
| 2016 | 15 |
| 2017 | 19 |
| 2018 | 10 |
| 2019 | 7 |
| 2020 | 4 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 13 |
| 2023 | 17 |
| 2024 | 6 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 55 years between 1957–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- 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●
Attested in 89 sources across 49 countries.
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 2026-09-12 data build · 606 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Zainab?
- We estimate roughly 19 thousand people bear Zainab (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
- In which country does Zainab have the most bearers?
- Zainab is most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is most often spelled зайнаб.
- How common is Zainab compared with other names?
- In Russia, Zainab is the 411th most common given name of 418,751 given names recorded there.
- 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 does the name Zainab mean?
- Recorded meaning: a classic Arabic female name; associated with Prophet Muhammad's daughter and wives.
Query this name via API
curl 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. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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 411th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.