Zoei is a spelling variant of Zoe, from Greek, meaning "life."
Zoei is a variant spelling of one of the great names of the ancient world: Zoe, from the Greek ζωή, meaning life itself. The name entered the Greek-speaking world with particular force in early Christianity, where it became a theological statement — to bear a name meaning life was to embody the central promise of the faith. It was popular among early Christian women and saints; the Byzantine empress Zoe Porphyrogenita, who ruled in the eleventh century and whose political intrigues helped shape the fate of Byzantium, is among history's most dramatic bearers.
The name traveled through Greek, Slavic, and eventually Western European naming traditions, often in forms that preserved its essential sound while adapting to local orthography. In English-speaking countries it gained steady popularity through the twentieth century, particularly from the 1990s onward, when one-syllable and two-syllable names with the clean, open -ee sound became fashionable. The spelling Zoei represents a contemporary stylistic variation — the added i functioning as a visual flourish that personalizes an already-established name without changing its pronunciation, a practice with deep roots in American naming culture.
Zoei sits at the intersection of the ancient and the thoroughly modern: a name whose meaning is as fundamental as a word can be, carried in a spelling that signals a particular moment in naming history. Parents who choose it often want something that feels both timeless and individual — a name that will make sense in a nursing home as readily as on a playground, but that still looks like it belongs to someone specific.