Zen
3,313 recorded births · active 1969–2025
Compare Zen →Living-age distribution
The median living Zen is 7. If you meet a Zen, there's about a 70% chance they're between 2 and 19 years old.
Popularity arc
Peak Zen: 2022. Down 15% from peak.
Projected: the dashed 10-year forecast (Holt damped-trend exponential smoothing, fit to recent years), with a shaded 95% interval.
Gender balance
82% male, 18% female.
Among males: median age 7 (2–20). Among females: median age 6 (3–16).
Rarity
Zen ranks #5,527 out of 105,966 names ever recorded by the SSA.
Geographic fingerprint
Zens are 1.0x more common in the West than the national average.
Predictive modeling
Three statistical models, all fit to Zen's own SSA history plus the historical behavior of every other name in the dataset.
Peak popularity prediction
Zen's modeled peak was #1,643 in 2022 — its trend isn't projected to beat that.
Projects the trend forward, then converts share into rank using this year's popularity distribution.
This forecasts Zen's share of births by fitting a damped-trend model to its last 39 years of data and projecting 10 years forward with a widening uncertainty band. Each projected share is then translated into a rank by comparing it against 2025's actual name-popularity distribution — so the model implicitly assumes the overall shape of that distribution doesn't shift much over the forecast window. Its trend is projected to stay below its historic best over the next 10 years, so the model treats 2022 as its peak. Milestone probabilities come from how much of each year's uncertainty band clears that milestone's rank, combined across years as if they were independent — which slightly overstates the odds for names sitting right at a threshold, since a good year is usually followed by another good year rather than an independent coin flip.Name life-cycle stage
A rule-based classifier over recent growth, momentum, and peak proximity.
Zen's all-time high was just 3 years ago (2022) — it's at or very near its historic peak right now.
Popularity survival model
Once a name reaches a rank tier, how long does it typically stay there before falling out?
Built from a Kaplan-Meier survival curve: every historical run any name has ever had above this tier, with runs still ongoing today counted as still in progress rather than as an exit.Zen isn't currently in the Top 100 tier. Estimated chance of entering it in the forecast window: 0%.
If Zen enters Top 100, chance it's still there after:
Names that do enter Top 100 have historically stayed a median of ~19 years. Based on 668 historical Top 100 runs across every name in the dataset.