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Celestia vs Celia

American parents have registered 56,716 Celias since 1880, against 1,414 Celestias. Celia is still ahead, with 351 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Celestia against Celia, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Celestia Celia

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

Celia 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 2025, when Celestia had 42 and Celia had 351.

Side by side

  Celestia Celia
Total US births 1,41456,716
Most in one year 42853
Babies in 2025 42351
Estimated living today 78030,000
Median age today 2041
Peak year 20251915
Best rank 3,577th girls195th girls
Rank in 2025 3,577th774th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,414 / 056,642 / 74

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 Celias alive today are over 41; half the Celestias are over 20. That is 21 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Celestia Celia
France 10 Célestia63,045 Célia
England and Wales 241,017

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: Celestia and Celia.