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We don't do useful things here like make BMDs available online; we don't even keep our census data! It just gets destroyed once it's been number-crunched. So it's very hard to say a sensible word about popularity figures. The education figures - GCSE or A-level equivalents - exist but of course only for a smallish proportion of largely middle-class kids.
That said, Zephaniah would count as a missionary name, with sound biblical credentials, and like Abel, Martha etc would have been used fairly routinely in black families for 150-200 years. Among whites, I've never seen any instances but if they exist, it'd be among the Afrikaans community, traditionally Calvinist and so also prone to using biblical names.
More specifically, in this case, the Zephne people are white, originally Afrikaans; I was at school with one who certainly spoke English at home. And the Zephany family would have been classified as Coloured when such classification was mandatory - basically mixed-race with admixtures of non-black African (Khoi, San) and the descendents of Malay slaves in the days of Dutch colonisation. This is a very interesting naming community; rather like black Americans, they often go for the exotic and amazing. I know of a man in his early 30s whose given name is pronounced Kri-SHAUN, which looks like a merger but, startlingly, is spelt Chretien!
Me, I quite like the sound of Zephany, but not the other two.
That said, Zephaniah would count as a missionary name, with sound biblical credentials, and like Abel, Martha etc would have been used fairly routinely in black families for 150-200 years. Among whites, I've never seen any instances but if they exist, it'd be among the Afrikaans community, traditionally Calvinist and so also prone to using biblical names.
More specifically, in this case, the Zephne people are white, originally Afrikaans; I was at school with one who certainly spoke English at home. And the Zephany family would have been classified as Coloured when such classification was mandatory - basically mixed-race with admixtures of non-black African (Khoi, San) and the descendents of Malay slaves in the days of Dutch colonisation. This is a very interesting naming community; rather like black Americans, they often go for the exotic and amazing. I know of a man in his early 30s whose given name is pronounced Kri-SHAUN, which looks like a merger but, startlingly, is spelt Chretien!
Me, I quite like the sound of Zephany, but not the other two.
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