Cecile
About 20,612 American babies have been named Cecile since 1880, most of them around 1918. In 2025 it ranked 5,554th. About 6,000 Ceciles are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 70.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cecile boys named Cecile
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 20,612
- Estimated living today
- 6,000
- Median age today
- 70
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 284th
- Rank in 2025
- 5,554th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 20,421 / 191
How old the living Ceciles are
born that year still alive today
Of the 20,612 babies given the name since 1880, about 6,000 are alive — 29 in every hundred. Roughly 410 of them are children and 3,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1955 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
From French Cécile, from Anglo-Norman Cecile, from Latin Caecilia.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ceciles
- Cécile de France (born 1975)Belgian actress
- Cécile La Grenade (born 1952)Governor-General of Grenada
- Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)French composer and pianist
- Cécile Aubry (1928–2010)French actress, television director, writer and screenwriter
- Cécile Duflot (born 1975)French politician
- Cécile Cassel (born 1982)French actress and singer
- Cécile Nowak (born 1967)judoka
- Cecile of France (1097–1145)daughter of Philip I of France
People named Cecile with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cecile is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cecile is most concentrated in New Hampshire (18.9×), Maine (17.5×), Rhode Island (12.8×), Vermont (12.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Cecile peaked:
Cecile elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Cécile +1 spelling | 177,910 | 23rd |
| Belgium girls | Cécile +1 spelling | 638 | 254th |
| Switzerland girls | Cécile | 295 | 274th |
| England and Wales girls | Cecile | 162 | 2,496th |
| France boys | Cécile | 155 | 866th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Cecile: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Cécile | 135 | 0.011% | 249th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Cécile | 157 | 0.036% | 125th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Cécile | 3 | 0.005% | 180th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Cecile is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.06% of children were given it – 38 of them.
Cecile: rank by region
In 2025, Cecile was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Cécile | 193 | 29 |
In 2023, Cecile was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Cecile | 8 | 1 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Cecile appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (98th) and Province of West Flanders (138th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Cecile among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Cecile | 835 | 2,055 |
| the Netherlands boys | Cecile | 5 | 117 |
| Finland girls | Cécile +1 spelling | 16 | 47 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Cecile lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 174 women called Cecile were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Cecile | 12 | 0.019 | 2,547 |
| Málaga | Cecile | 14 | 0.015 | 2,653 |
| Palmas, Las | Cecile | 8 | 0.014 | 4,373 |
| Almería | Cecile | 5 | 0.013 | 3,025 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Cecile | 10 | 0.010 | 4,342 |
| Zaragoza | Cecile | 5 | 0.010 | 3,555 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Cecile against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.