diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
index 945922b5f9ba8..05a26456374bd 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
@@ -1727,4 +1727,5 @@ Other
 - Compat with SciPy 0.19.0 for testing on ``.interpolate()`` (:issue:`15662`)
 - Compat for 32-bit platforms for ``.qcut/cut``; bins will now be ``int64`` dtype (:issue:`14866`)
 - Bug in interactions with ``Qt`` when a ``QtApplication`` already exists (:issue:`14372`)
+- Bug in DataFrame constructor failing to handle dtypes with passed a Series with a falsey name (:issue:`16114`)
 - Avoid use of ``np.finfo()`` during ``import pandas`` removed to mitigate deadlock on Python GIL misuse (:issue:`14641`)
diff --git a/pandas/core/frame.py b/pandas/core/frame.py
index b3da897b97e5c..983a6ef3e045a 100644
--- a/pandas/core/frame.py
+++ b/pandas/core/frame.py
@@ -296,7 +296,7 @@ def __init__(self, data=None, index=None, columns=None, dtype=None,
                 if columns is None:
                     columns = data_columns
                 mgr = self._init_dict(data, index, columns, dtype=dtype)
-            elif getattr(data, 'name', None):
+            elif getattr(data, 'name', None) is not None:
                 mgr = self._init_dict({data.name: data}, index, columns,
                                       dtype=dtype)
             else:
diff --git a/pandas/tests/frame/test_constructors.py b/pandas/tests/frame/test_constructors.py
index 737d9f8e50477..f6cdb37a2477a 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/frame/test_constructors.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/frame/test_constructors.py
@@ -1888,6 +1888,15 @@ def test_from_records_len0_with_columns(self):
         self.assertEqual(len(result), 0)
         self.assertEqual(result.index.name, 'foo')
 
+    def test_to_frame_with_falsey_names(self):
+        # GH 16114
+        result = Series(name=0).to_frame().dtypes
+        expected = Series({0: np.float64})
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
+
+        result = DataFrame(Series(name=0)).dtypes
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
+
 
 class TestDataFrameConstructorWithDatetimeTZ(tm.TestCase, TestData):