Cynthia
About 713,412 American babies have been named Cynthia since 1880, most of them around 1957. In 2025 it ranked 1,013th. About 595,000 Cynthias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cynthia boys named Cynthia
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 713,412
- Estimated living today
- 595,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 7th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,013th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 711,453 / 1,959
How old the living Cynthias are
born that year still alive today
Of the 713,412 babies given the name since 1880, about 595,000 are alive — 83 in every hundred. Roughly 9,700 of them are children and 274,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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 Ancient Greek
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Cynthias
- Cynthia Nixon (born 1966)American actress and politician
- Cynthia Erivo (born 1987)British actress and singer-songwriter
- Cynthia Lennon (1939–2015)former wife of John Lennon
- Cynthia Rothrock (born 1957)American actress and martial artist
- Cynthia Watros (born 1968)American actress
- Cynthia McKinney (born 1955)American politician and activist
- Cynthia Lummis (born 1954)American politician
- Cynthia Ozick (born 1928)American writer
People named Cynthia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cynthia is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cynthia is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (1.5×), Connecticut (1.2×), Alaska (1.2×), California (1.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular girls’ names the year Cynthia peaked:
Cynthia elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Cynthia | 22,550 | 66th |
| Belgium girls | Cynthia | 778 | 74th |
| England and Wales girls | Cynthia | 394 | 1,387th |
| Switzerland girls | Cynthia | 259 | 228th |
| Ireland girls | Cynthia | 221 | 225th |
| Poland girls | Cynthia | 47 birth registrations | 362nd |
| Scotland girls | Cynthia | 6 | 510th |
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.
Cynthia: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Cynthia | 116 | 0.009% | 207th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Cynthia | 139 | 0.032% | 102nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Cynthia | 4 | 0.006% | 170th |
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, Cynthia is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.04% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Cynthia: rank by region
In 2012, Cynthia was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Cynthia | 874 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – 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.
Cynthia 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 | Cynthia | 6,054 | 7,222 |
| Finland girls | Cynthia | 37 | 52 |
| the Netherlands boys | Cynthia | — | 24 |
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 Cynthia lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 3,449 women called Cynthia 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Cynthia | 249 | 0.422 | 294 |
| Ceuta | Cynthia | 15 | 0.362 | 411 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Cynthia | 164 | 0.296 | 393 |
| Málaga | Cynthia | 225 | 0.245 | 376 |
| Cádiz | Cynthia | 131 | 0.204 | 384 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Cynthia | 201 | 0.196 | 493 |
Listed in 50 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 2 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
Cynthia 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.