Cecila
Feminine · “blind”
Cecila is Cecilia with one letter fewer, and the letter it drops is one that most American speakers were not pronouncing anyway. The Latin word underneath the name has had an odd career, and part of it is currently living underground in the tropics.
How old is the name Cecila?
Cecila first appears in US birth records in 1900 — 125 years ago. The typical Cecila alive today was born around 1968, making them about 57 years old. About 600 people named Cecila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cecila most popular?
Cecila peaked in 1900, reaching #1561 nationally. See the whole 1900 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Caecilius to Cecila
The story of Cecila
The same Latin root turns up in an unexpected place. Caecilians are amphibians, related to frogs and salamanders, and they look like large earthworms: no legs, a ringed body, and eyes so reduced that many of them are covered by skin or bone. They spend their lives burrowing and they were named, in Latin, for being blind. So the word behind one of the most familiar women's names in Europe is also the scientific name for a creature almost nobody has ever seen. As for the spelling here, the i that has been removed comes from a syllable American English barely says: Cecilia is three syllables in ordinary speech, and taking out a letter from a place where nothing is sounded is the most invisible edit a name can undergo.
Meaning
blind
The name descends from a Roman family name built on caecus, the Latin for blind. Roman family names were frequently built on a physical description of an ancestor, and nobody was expected to take it personally by the time it had been inherited for six generations.
How the name formed
- Caecilius
- Caecilia
- Cecilia
- Cecila
Related forms: Cecilia · Cecilia · Cécile · Cecylia
Pronouncing Cecila
suh-SEE-luh
Three syllables with the weight in the middle. The missing i changes the look of the name and not the sound of it.
Nicknames for Cecila
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1900
- Most girls named
- 197018 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1561reached in 1900
- Change vs 2012
- −28.6%5 in 2022, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Cecila in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Cecilia in Italian — same name
- Cecilia in Spanish — same name
- Cécile in French — same name
- Cecylia in Polish — same name
Cecilas among us
people named Cecila are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Cecila sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The name behind it is ancient, documented and used across Europe, so it needs no explaining anywhere.
- Cece is available as a short form from the first day and is thoroughly familiar.
- The meaning is settled, which is more than most names of any period can offer.
- Cecilia is overwhelmingly the standard spelling and the missing i will be supplied by nearly everyone.
- The meaning is blind, which is a plain fact about a Roman family and still takes some people aback.
- It sits close enough to Cecelia and Cicely that it will be spelled by ear as either.
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What they receive
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Cecila
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Cecilas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Cecila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Cecila in 2025?
- Cecila is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Cecila with classmates?
- Cecila will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Carol#2239 · Cynthia#1013 · Catherine#313 · Christine#1272 · Carolyn#1222 · Christina#770 · Charlotte#2 · Cheryl#4352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cecila? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cecila and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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