Zoja

Zoja comes from Greek. The root is zoē, the ordinary word for life. Early Christians in the Greek East gave that name to Eve, since Scripture calls her the mother of all the living, and so a common noun became a woman's name.

The variant Zoya carries the same root eastward, through Russian and Ukrainian usage, where the spelling shifts but the meaning holds at życie, life. A martyr called Zoë stands in the old calendars, which is why Polish name-day lists mark Zoja on the second and fifteenth of May, with the fifth of July kept in some.

The name stays rare. It has been gaining ground. Picture a class register where Zoja sits among the more familiar spellings, four letters that mean life.