Zola
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Congolese: 'productive'; Xhosa (South Africa): 'quietness' (male name)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/zowlə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zola is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 4.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 103K
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 10K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 250 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Congolese: 'productive'; Xhosa (South Africa): 'quietness' (male name).
Sources 1
- African Names
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Zola, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
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.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zola 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #911 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Zola | 43 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Zola | 6 |
| US United States | — | 3,216 | 1 in 103K | 3.1K | Zola | 250 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 487K | — | Zola | 13 |
| FR France | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 178K | 860 | — | 4 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 85K | 53 | Zola | 20 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈58 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Zola | 8 |
| GY Guyana | — | 22 | 1 in 34K | 22 | — | 2 |
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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
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 nameBaby 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 nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, Emile, French writer
as a namePronouncing 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 wordkaikki.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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Zola Cooperb. 1904American medical researcher
- Zola Buddb. 1966ZASouth African competitive runner
- Zola Masekob. 1967SZSwazi film director
- Zola Davisb. 1975USAmerican football player
- Zola Saphethab. 1979South African trade unionist
- Zola Lewandowskib. 2003DEGerman canoeist
- Zola Williamsactor
- Zola M. PackmanUSAmerican papyrologist
- Zola GidiGBauthor
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 76 sources across 36 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.1K | #5,363 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 860 | #768 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 167 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 120 | #2,210 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 76 | #5,363 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 22 | #572 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2024 | 10 | #787 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 5 | — |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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
- Is Zola a male or female name?
- Zola 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.
- What does the name Zola mean, and where does it come from?
- Congolese: 'productive'; Xhosa (South Africa): 'quietness' (male name). Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Zola?
- A machine transcription gives /zowlə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Zola have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Zola in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zola.
- 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.
What do you want to know about Zola?
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/zolaThe 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, “Zola” — the 911th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.