Cecelia
- Pronunciation
- [Ce-ce-li-a]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- "Blind. Famous Bearer: The Blind St. Cecilie, Patron Saint Of Music, Was A Talented Musician."
- Origin
- Latin
About the Name Cecelia
Cecelia is the English spelling variant of Cecilia, descending from the Latin Caecilia, the feminine form of the Roman family name Caecilius, derived from caecus meaning "blind." The name's overwhelming Catholic anchor is Saint Cecilia of Rome (c. 200 CE), the iconic early Christian martyr and patron saint of music, often depicted playing musical instruments.
The various spellings (Cecelia, Cecilia, Sicilia) are tracked separately by SSA and represent the same underlying Latin name. The Cecelia spelling specifically appeals to parents seeking a more visually distinctive form than the historical Cecilia. Notable bearers include American actress Cecilia Sinclair; American author Cecelia Ahern (born 1981, the Irish author of P.S. I Love You 2004); and the contemporary American basketball player Cecelia Hodges.
Cecelia held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1880 through 1925. The name has been continuously used in American naming for over a century, particularly common in Italian-American, Spanish-American, and Catholic naming. After a long mid-20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave. Cecelia climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its layered Latin-Catholic-musical-saint pedigree combined with four flowing syllables — the in-built Saint Cecilia patron-saint-of-music religious anchor, the elegant Latinate sophistication, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. The name reads as both classical-Catholic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Cece (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm), Celia (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), Cilla, Sissy, and the rare Lia each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Cecelia, Cecilia (the historical English spelling), Cecilia, and Cicely have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Cecilia (Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/Polish/Swedish), Cécile (French, with accent), Cäcilia (German), and the original Latin Caecilia.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Cecelia
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Cecelia by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2023 with 616 girls named Cecelia (girl rank #497 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #529 for girls (569 US births). That's 32 places below its 2023 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Cecelia Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Cecelia the strongest states are North Dakota, Minnesota, New Hampshire.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | #169 | 25 |
| 2 | Minnesota | #199 | 267 |
| 3 | New Hampshire | #206 | 35 |
| 4 | Maine | #217 | 21 |
| 5 | Wisconsin | #252 | 201 |
| 6 | Massachusetts | #258 | 210 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #275 | 387 |
| 8 | Ohio | #277 | 379 |
| 9 | Iowa | #303 | 107 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #318 | 86 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #856 | 56 |
| 2 | Florida | #840 | 174 |
| 3 | Tennessee | #737 | 66 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #713 | 110 |
| 5 | South Carolina | #689 | 32 |
| 6 | Alabama | #686 | 26 |
| 7 | Oklahoma | #630 | 26 |
| 8 | Arizona | #627 | 75 |
| 9 | Washington | #624 | 107 |
| 10 | Virginia | #605 | 118 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Cecelia in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Cecelia?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Cecelia to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Cecelia against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).