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Cecile vs Cecillia

American parents have registered 20,612 Ceciles since 1880, against 556 Cecillias. Cecile is still ahead, with 22 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cecile against Cecillia, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cecile Cecillia

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Cecile has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Cecile had 21 and Cecillia had 15.

Side by side

  Cecile Cecillia
Total US births 20,612556
Most in one year 50320
Babies in 2025 22under 5
Estimated living today 6,000520
Median age today 7024
Peak year 19182007
Best rank 284th girls6,552nd girls
Rank in 2025 5,554thunranked
First recorded 18801907
Girls / boys 20,421 / 191556 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Ceciles alive today are over 70; half the Cecillias are over 24. That is 46 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cecile Cecillia
France 178,065 Cécile75

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Cecile and Cecillia.