Zoe

Zoe comes from the Greek word zoē, which means life. When Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, they reached for Zoe as their name for the first woman, the one Hebrew calls Chavah, or Eve, whose name also points toward the living. The name arrived among early Christians already bound to that meaning.

A martyr named Zoe was honoured in the early Church, and the name held on across the Greek East for centuries. In eleventh-century Constantinople, Zoe Porphyrogenita ruled as empress, born to the purple and crowned in her own right.

In Poland the name is a newcomer. A teacher reading a class register today might find a Zosia and a Zoe on the same page, the second spelled just as the Greek left it. The Polish gloss holds close to the source: życie, life.