Zed
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Especially U.S.: short form of the much rarer full name Zedekiah
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/zɛd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zed is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 720K(measured from records)
- BHBahrain≈1 in 30K
- SYSyria≈1 in 36K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 153 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 30K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Bahrain, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Especially U.S.: short form of the much rarer full name Zedekiah. This name, meaning ‘justice of Yahweh’ in Hebrew, is borne in the Bible by three separate characters.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zed 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 213K | listed | — | 1 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 58K | listed | Zed | 19 |
| SY Syria | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Zed | 10 |
| US United States | 462 | 1 in 720K | 448 | Zed | 153 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 90K | — | Zed | 13 |
| BH Bahrain | ≈50 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Zed | 7 |
| KW Kuwait | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 80K | — | Zed | 6 |
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. 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)
Zed 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, The name of the Latin-script letter Z/z.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
English (esp. U.S.): short form of the much rarer full name Zedekiah. This name, meaning ‘justice of Yahweh’ in Hebrew, is borne in the Bible by three separate characters.
as a word
In enm, alternative form of sad
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In yol, stewed, sodden
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In zlw-ocs, wall
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)
- Zed S. Stantonb. 1848USAmerican politician
- M. Zeet Hamdy Assovieb. 1962IDnot in their usual nameSecretary of West Kalimantan
- Zed Al Refaib. 1966KWmountaineer
- Zed Seseljab. 1977AUAustralian politician
- Zed Zaidib. 1980MYactor
- Zied Bhairib. 1981TNnot in their usual nameTunisian association football player
- Zed ShawCACanadian software developer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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
- Where does the name Zed come from?
- Especially U.S.: short form of the much rarer full name Zedekiah. This name, meaning ‘justice of Yahweh’ in Hebrew, is borne in the Bible by three separate characters. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Zed a male or female name?
- Zed is a male 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 Zed?
- In the etymology graph, Zedekiah is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Zed?
- A machine transcription gives /zɛd/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Zed mean?
- Recorded meaning: Especially U.S.: short form of the much rarer full name Zedekiah.
- In which country does Zed have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Zed in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Zed?
- In the United States, the national register counted 462 people named Zed in 2020, about 1 in 720 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Zed?
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/zedThe 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, “Zed”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.