Otilia
Feminine · “wealth”
Otilia belongs to Alsace before it belongs to anywhere else. Saint Odilia, born blind around the year 660 and abbess of a monastery on a mountain above the Rhine plain, is the patron saint of Alsace and of the blind, and every Otilia, Ottilie and Odile in Europe descends from her cult.
How old is the name Otilia?
Otilia first appears in US birth records in 1893 — 132 years ago. The typical Otilia alive today was born around 1947, making them about 78 years old. About 900 people named Otilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Otilia most popular?
Otilia peaked in 1935, reaching #1182 nationally. Today it ranks #6325, 5,143 places below that high. See the whole 1935 chart.
Where it comes from
From od to Otilia
The story of Otilia
The Hohenburg abbey on Mont Sainte-Odile made the name a fixture across Alsace and the upper Rhine, and from there it spread in two directions: north and east as Ottilie and Ottilia in German-speaking lands, and south into the Romance languages as Odile in French and Otilia in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. Romania in particular kept it in steady use, and George Calinescu's 1938 novel made Otilia one of the best-known names in Romanian literature. It reached the United States with Central European and Mexican immigration and had its best American year in 1935, which places it with the generation of women born to those arrivals rather than with the arrivals themselves.
Meaning
wealth, fortune, inheritance
From the Germanic element od or aud, meaning riches, prosperity or inherited property, with a diminutive ending. The same element appears in Otto, Odette, Ottoline and the Old English Eadweard, Edward. The sense is not money in the modern sense but the patrimony a family holds, which is why it appears so often in the names of noble houses.
How the name formed
- od
- Odila
- Ottilia
- Otilia
Related forms: Odile · Ottilie · Otilia · Otilia · Otilia
Pronouncing Otilia
oh-TEE-lee-ah
Four syllables with the stress on the second in Spanish and Romanian. English speakers usually reduce it to oh-TIL-ee-uh with a short i, which is the ordinary American adaptation.
Nicknames for Otilia
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
- 1893
- Most girls named
- 193536 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1182reached in 1935
- Change vs 2023
- +38.5%18 in 2025, from 13
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.
Otilia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Odile in French — same name
- Ottilie in German — same name
- Otilia in Romanian — same name
- Otilia in Hungarian — same name
- Otilia in Portuguese — same name
Otilias among us
people named Otilia are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 89,293 born in 2025 was named Otilia
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Otilia
- #6325
- Otilia on the 2025 chart
- #921
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Otilia went to 18 girls in 2025, but Ottilia and Otillia are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 39, which makes it the 921st most-given girls’ name of the year — 5,404 places above the chart.
- Otilia18
- Ottilia13
- Otillia8
About 1 girl in 41,212 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 89,293 for Otilia itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Alean test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Otilia's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alean climbed just as high around 1912, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alean's path sketches the road Otilia is walking now.
Otilia sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Otilia beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Otilia in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented saint, a documented meaning, and thirteen centuries of continuous use.
- Recognizable across Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and German families.
- Tillie gives it a warm, thoroughly English everyday form.
- Ottilia, Otillia and Odilia all exist, and the single t is the minority spelling in German-speaking use.
- American readers will not know it and will reach for Otelia or Odelia instead.
- It reads as an older woman's name in Romania and Mexico, which may be exactly the point.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Otilia
Feminine · #6325 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Otilias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Otilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Otilia?
- Otilia is the most-used spelling in US records — 18 of the 39 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Ottilia and Otillia.
- How popular is the name Otilia in 2025?
- Otilia ranks #6325 among US girl names in 2025, with 18 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Otilia?
- About 1 in every 89,293 US girls born in 2025 was named Otilia — 18 in all.
- Will my child share the name Otilia with classmates?
- Otilia will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Otilia
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaye#6325 · Doria#6325 · Karolyn#6325 · Rosaleen#6325 · Roni#6325 · Darian#6325 · Svetlana#6325 · Fanny#6325
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Otilia? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Otilia and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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