How popular is the baby name Cecilia in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Cecilia.

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Popularity of the baby name Cecilia


Posts that mention the name Cecilia

First names from King Henry III’s fine rolls (1200s)

Henry III of England
Henry III of England

I’ve got some 13th-century English names for you today!

They come from the fine rolls of Henry III of England (1216–1272).

“Fine rolls” were basically financial records. They kept track of money offered to the king in return for concessions and favors. King Henry III wasn’t the first to keep them, but they “expand[ed] considerably in size and content during Henry’s reign.”

For a time, the Henry III Fine Rolls Project — the aim of which was to “democratize the contents” of Henry III’s fine rolls “by making them freely available in English translation to everyone via a website” — hosted a sortable database of all the given names in the rolls. While that database was available, I used it to create lists of the most-mentioned male and female names. (All the names are still online, but they’re no longer sortable.)

The rankings below — which cover a wide range of birth years, and a small segment of society — aren’t the same as the single-year, society-wide baby name rankings we’re accustomed to. But they do give us a general idea of which names were the most popular during the 1200s.

Of the 8,423 male names in the fine rolls, these were the most popular:

  1. William (1,217 mentions)
  2. John (669)
  3. Richard (495)
  4. Robert (434)
  5. Henry (376)
  6. Ralph (365)
  7. Thomas (351)
  8. Walter (346)
  9. Roger (337)
  10. Hugh (297)
  11. Geoffrey (261)
  12. Simon (218)
  13. Adam (200)
  14. Nicholas, Peter (180 each)
  15. Gilbert (157)
  16. Alan (110)
  17. Phillip (109)
  18. Reginald (88)
  19. Stephen (83)
  20. Elias (66)
  21. Alexander (65)
  22. Osbert (52)
  23. Eustace (44)
  24. Andrew, Matthew (42 each)
  25. Ranulf (40)

Other names on the men’s list: Hamo, Fulk, Payn, Waleran, Drogo, Engeram, Amfrid, Ratikin, Walkelin, Bonefey, Fulcher, Hasculf, Herlewin, Joldwin, Lefsi, Marmaduke, Orm, Albizium, Cocky, Deulobene, Gwenwynwyn, Markewart.

Of the 1,314 female names in the fine rolls, these were the most popular:

  1. Alice (140 mentions)
  2. Matilda (138)
  3. Agnes (76)
  4. Margaret (69)
  5. Joan (62)
  6. Isabella (60)
  7. Emma (37)
  8. Beatrice (34)
  9. Mabel (33)
  10. Cecilia (32)
  11. Christiana (30)
  12. Hawise (29)
  13. Juliana (27)
  14. Sibyl (25)
  15. Rose (21)
  16. Sarra (16)
  17. Helewise (15)
  18. Avice, Eleanor, Eva, Lucy (14 each)
  19. Leticia (13)
  20. Felicia (12)
  21. Isolda, Margery, Petronilla (11 each)
  22. Ascelina, Edith (10 each)
  23. Phillippa (9)
  24. Amice, Elena, Katherine, Mary, Sabina (8 each)
  25. Basilia, Muriel (7 each)

Other names on the women’s list: Albrea, Amabilia, Eustachia, Idonea, Egidia, Millicent, Amphelisa, Avegaya, Barbata, Comitessa, Frethesenta, Wulveva, Alveva, Dervorguilla, Deulecresse, Elizabeth (just 1!), Flandrina, Oriolda.

A researcher working on the project reported that, of all the men mentioned in the rolls, 14.4% were named William and 7.9% were named John. She also noted that, just like today, the female names showed a greater amount of diversity:

Compared with 57.8 per cent of the men, only 51.8 per cent of the women had one of the top ten names. And 9.44 per cent of the women had names that occurred only once, whereas 3.38 per cent of the men had names that occurred only once.

See any names you like?

Sources: The Henry III Fine Rolls by David Carpenter, The Henry III Fine Rolls Project, ‘William’ most popular medieval name – King’s College London
Image: Henry III (13th-century illustration)

[Latest update: June 2023]

Baby girl gets 26 names: Ann Bertha Cecilia…

I’ve found long names, and alphabetical sibling names, but this is the first time I’ve spotted a long, alphabetical name that belonged to a single individual.

A baby girl born on December 19, 1882, in West Derby, Liverpool, England, to Arthur and Sarah Pepper was named:

Ann Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louisa Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Starkey Teresa Ulyses Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeus Pepper

Regarding the name, the Boston Evening Transcript quipped, “Apparently the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has little power in London”:

Ann Bertha Cecelia

(The handwriting on the original birth record is relatively clear, but certain names are hard to make out — this accounts for the spelling differences between my version and the Transcript‘s version.)

Thoughts?

Sources:

Early case of boy name “stolen” by girls

I discovered this very early case of a male name becoming a female name while reading about medieval English pet names that end with -ot and -et (e.g. Cissot for Cecilia, Ibbot for Isabella):

But the girl-name that made most mark was originally a boy’s name, Theobald. Tibbe was the nick form, and Tibbot the pet name. Very speedily it became the property of the female sex, such entries as Tibot Fitz-piers ending in favour of Tibota Foliot. After the year 1300 Tib, or Tibet, is invariably feminine.

Girl-cats were commonly named Tib during this period. (Boy-cats were called Gib.)

Tib reminds me of Toby, another male nickname used for girls. Toby, short for Tobias, was more popular as a girl name than as a boy name in the U.S. for most of the early 20th century (1910s-1940s).

Source: Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell. Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. London: Chatto & Windus, 1897.

Celebrity baby name story: Harper

American novelist Harper Lee (1926-2016)
Harper Lee

Gregory Peck won an Oscar for playing Atticus Finch in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), based on the 1960 novel of the same name.

In 1999, Peck’s daughter Cecilia gave birth a baby boy she named Harper in honor of the novel’s author, Harper Lee.

Source: Bernard, Jami. “Gregory Peck and the Role of Our Lifetime.” New York Daily News 17 May 2000.

Image: Adapted from Photo portrait of Harper Lee (public domain)