Cecilia

109,389 people in America carry this name — ranked #517 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it sih SEEL yuh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

S IH0 S IY1 L Y AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 109,389 2020 Census
  • Rank #517 Common
  • Per 100,000 36.2 about 1 in 3,030 people
  • As a surname 318 ranked #67,004 the other way round

What Cecilia means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “blind”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Cecilia through the years

100,720 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2019, with 1,855 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names that fit Cecilia

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Cecilia Ashley — runs together
  • Cecilia Amy — runs together
  • Cecilia Anna — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Cecilia has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Boys or girls: who is called Cecilia?

0.2% men
109,197 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where in America Cecilia is thickest on the ground

In Arizona the name is given 1.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Arizona ×1.6
  • New Mexico ×1.6
  • California ×1.6
  • Texas ×1.5
  • Nebraska ×1.3

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The same name elsewhere

  • Sis English
  • Cis English
  • Cile Hamb
  • Cila Ill
  • Cecil English
  • Sisley English
  • Kilian German
  • Cilika Ill
  • Cicily English
  • Cecily English
  • Cecile French
  • Sheelah Ir
  • Sessylt Welsh
  • Liliola Italian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Names built the same way as Cecilia

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the second

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin