Cecil
At the 2020 census, 11,545 Americans bore the surname Cecil — 3,038th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 25,900.
By the numbers
- People
- 11,545
- Rank
- 3,038th
- How common
- 1 in 25,900
- Per 100,000
- 3.9
Where the name comes from
Origin Welsh
From Latin Caecilius, a Roman family name derived from caecus (“blind”). The surname has absorbed the owl Seisyllt, from Latin Sextilius, from Sextus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Cecil described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Cecil
- Robert Cecil (1864–1958)lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom
- William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598)English statesman and chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I
- Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563–1612)English politician
- David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter (1905–1981)English athlete, sports official, and Conservative Party politician
- Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter (1542–1623)English politician
- Lord David Cecil (1902–1986)British biographer, historian and academic
- Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood (1869–1956)British politician
- Nora Cecil (1878–1951)American actress
People named Cecil with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Also a first name
Cecil has been given to 114,676 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1920. See it as a given name.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.