Célia
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Latin; likely from Caelia/Cecilia, associated with 'heavenly' or the Caelius family
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/selja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Célia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 84th most common given name.
- PYParaguay≈1 in 781(inferred from the name graph)
- ARArgentina≈1 in 929
- ESSpain1 in 934
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #719 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 443 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 781 (inferred from the name graph)
162,575 people, 2022
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Paraguay, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Celia in BR Brazil, US United States, AR Argentina and 4 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Latin; likely from Caelia/Cecilia, associated with 'heavenly' or the Caelius family.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Célia counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #115 | 162,575 | 1 in 1.3K | 185K | Celia | 174 |
| ES Spain | #196 | 53,557 | 1 in 934 | 54K | Celia | 193 |
| US United States | #700 | 49,709 | 1 in 6.7K | 50K | Celia | 443 |
| AR Argentina | #253 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 929 | 367 | Celia | 97 |
| PE Peru | #230 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 967 | — | Celia | 60 |
| PY Paraguay | #143 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 781 | — | Celia | 38 |
| UY Uruguay | #84 | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Celia | 39 |
162,575 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Célia is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Dérivé de Cécile, du latin caecus « aveugle ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Célia Lafitedupontb. 1953FRFrench film editor
- Marinha Rauppb. 1960BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian politician
- Célia Lawsonb. 1974PTPortuguese singer
- Célia Foulonb. 1979FRFrench rower
- Célia de Lavergneb. 1979FRFrench politician
- Célia Bourgeoisb. 1983FRFrench cross-country skier
- Célia Okoyino da Mbabib. 1988DEGerman association football player
- Célia Aymonierb. 1991FRFrench biathlete and cross-country skier
- Célia Cabaneb. 1992French historian
- Célia Granier-DeferreFRFrench actor and screenwriter
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 26 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 185K | #279 |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Célia mean, and where does it come from?
- Latin; likely from Caelia/Cecilia, associated with 'heavenly' or the Caelius family. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- How do you pronounce Célia?
- A machine transcription gives /selja/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Célia a male or female name?
- Célia is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Célia?
- In the etymology graph, Céline, Silke and Caelia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Célia have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 163 thousand people named Célia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled celia.
- How common is the name Célia?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 162,575 people named Célia in 2022, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Célia compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Célia is the 115th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Célia?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/c%C3%A9liaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Célia” — the 115th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.