Everyday LifeGreek → English
Zoe
/ˈzoʊi/noun
A female given name.
The Greek roots
ζωή
zōḗ
life
Literally: “life”
Follow a root:ζωή2 words
The story of the word
Zōḗ is bare life, the fact of being alive, and it appears in the New Testament phrase zōḕ aiṓnios, eternal life, which is why early Christians used it as a name. Three Byzantine empresses carried it, one of them ruling in her own right in 1042. English adoption came late, in the nineteenth century, and the name climbed hard after 1990. Zoo holds the same root, being short for zoological garden, a garden of living things.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
zoozoologyprotozoanazoic
In a sentence
Zoe was named after her great-grandmother, who spelled it with a diaeresis.