Cesar

121,106 people in America carry this name — ranked #465 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it SEE zur

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

S IY1 Z ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 121,106 2020 Census
  • Rank #465 Common
  • Per 100,000 40.1 about 1 in 2,737 people
  • As a surname 3,774 ranked #8,405 the other way round

What Cesar means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “hairy”.

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.

Cesar through the years

74,685 babies were given this name since 1915. The busiest year was 2004, with 2,536 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 2000s. It has been given less 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 for Cesar

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Cesar Robert — runs together
  • Cesar Richard — runs together
  • Cesar Christopher — same opening

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.

Boys or girls: who is called Cesar?

99.8% men
262 women

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

The same name elsewhere

  • Cäsar German
  • Cæsar
  • Cesare Italian
  • Cesarina 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.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 2.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 94.8%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.5%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where in America Cesar is thickest on the ground

In California the name is given 3.0 times as often as it is across the country.

  • California ×3.0
  • Arizona ×2.6
  • Nevada ×2.5
  • Texas ×2.4
  • New Mexico ×1.9

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.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher 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