Cécile

given name · Latin script

Meaning: From Latin Caecilia, feminine of Caecilius, from caecus 'blind'

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Cécile is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 785(inferred from the name graph)
  • CMCameroon≈1 in 1.5K
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 6.2K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Cécile itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

France (inferred from the name graph)

≈86,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
372 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 785 (inferred from the name graph)

France, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CécileLatin(measured from records)
СесильCyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Cecile in FR France, US United States, PH Philippines and 2 more and Cecilie in NO Norway.

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)

From Latin Caecilia, feminine of Caecilius, from caecus 'blind'.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cécile 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.

Where Cécile is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France#87≈86,000 est.≈1 in 785178KCecile372
US United States—37,487as Cecil1 in 8.9K36KCecile318
CM Cameroon#86≈19,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Cecile26
PH Philippines—≈17,000 est.≈1 in 6.2K—Cecile80
DK Denmark—15,237as Cecilie1 in 38515K—1
NO Norway—8,301as Cecilie1 in 65931KCecilie15
NL Netherlands—2,1721 in 8K2.1KCecile63
GY Guyana—538as Cecil1 in 1.4K538——

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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cécile is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Cecile, Cecilé, Cècile, Cėcile

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Cécilé, Cecile, Cècile

  • a separate given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland

    Also written Cecile, Cecilé

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Cecile

48 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cécile is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, a female given name, equivalent to English Cecilia

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In French, Du latin Caecilia, dérivé de caecus, «aveugle».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Du latin Caecilia, lié à caecus, « aveugle ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Du latin Caecilius/Caecilia; fête le 22 novembre.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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)

100012001400160018002000Cecile of France, b. 1097Cecily of York, b. 1469Cécile Chaminade, b. 1857Pauline Réage, b. 1907Cécile Aubry, b. 1928Cécile La Grenade, b. 1952Zabou Breitman, b. 1959Cécile Kyenge, b. 1964Cécile de France, b. 1975Cécile Cassel, b. 1982

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 31 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Cécile
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024178K#931
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—1.6K#940
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—50#6,715
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—30#3,774

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 Cécile mean, and where does it come from?
From Latin Caecilia, feminine of Caecilius, from caecus 'blind'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
Is Cécile a male or female name?
Cécile 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 Cécile?
In the etymology graph, Cecilia, Sheila and Celia are forms of the same name in other languages; Silke is a recorded short or pet form.
In which country does Cécile have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 86 thousand people named Cécile in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cecile.
How common is the name Cécile?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 2,172 people named Cécile, about 1 in 8.0 thousand residents.
How common is Cécile compared with other names?
In France, Cécile is the 87th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cécile?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/c%C3%A9cile

The 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, “Cécile” — the 87th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cécile parses inside a full name →