Zinovii
A Greek name meaning "life of Zeus", carried in Poland almost entirely by Ukrainian men. Only a few hundred bear it here and no boys were named Zinovii last year, so most Poles will never meet one.
Zinovii Pronunciation
What Zinovii means
Where Zinovii comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Zinovii comes from Greek. Behind it stands Zēnobios, built from Zeus, whose older genitive was Zēnos, and bios, the word for life. Read that way, the name means the life of Zeus, borrowing vigor from the highest of the old gods.
Its home, though, is Ukrainian.
The most famous bearer proves it. Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossack hetman who led the uprising of 1648, was baptized Zynovii, and he sometimes signed himself Zynovii-Bohdan, a Greek Christian name set beside a Slavic one. Saint Zenobius of Aegae, a physician martyred under Diocletian, gives the name its church feast on 30 October, the day a boy called Zinovii would once have kept his imieniny.
No softer diminutive trails after it in the given forms here. Zinovii stands on its own, and it still reads, at root, as the life of Zeus.
How many people are named Zinovii
1 in 51686 men in Poland is named Zinovii. 413 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1463 among male names.