Zélie is the French feminine of Solene/Zealot — from the Greek zēlōtēs (diligent, zealous, eager). A modern French Catholic revival name. Saint Zélie Martin (born Marie-Azélie Guérin, 1831-1877) — French Catholic saint; mother of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (one of the most-popular Catholic saints of the modern era and a Doctor of the Catholic Church); Zélie was a lace-maker and businesswoman in Alençon; canonized along with her husband Louis Martin on October 18, 2015 by Pope Francis — the first married couple in Catholic Church history to be canonized together at the same Mass; their feast is July 12. **Children of Blood and Bone (2018)** — Tomi Adeyemi's fantasy series; the protagonist Zélie Adebola is a teenage maji whose powers were stolen by the Orïshan king; the novel sold 1+ million copies, won the Andre Norton Award, and is in development as a major motion picture by Disney.
Featured throughout Catholic tradition and modern fantasy fiction.
Zélie does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Zélie reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.