Cilia
surname · Latin script
Meaning: plural of cilium (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 29 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈsɪ.li.ə/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Cilia is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 110K(inferred from the name graph)
- ARArgentina1 in 133K
- MXMexico≈1 in 200K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 149 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,300 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Malta, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Cilia
- English:/ˈsɪ.li.ə/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- Spanish:/θilja/(machine-generated) model-generated
- Italian:/ʃilja/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)plural of cilium
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where the surname Cilia is found
(measured from records)Cilia 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 25K | listed | Cilia | 14 |
| MX Mexico | — | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 199K | 20 | Cilia | 54 |
| FR France | — | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 106K | 64 | Cilia | 149 |
| US United States | — | 454 | 1 in 733K | 454 | Cilia | 79 |
| AR Argentina | — | 342 | 1 in 133K | 342 | Cilia | 33 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 177K | listed | Cilia | 6 |
| MT Malta | #535 | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Cilia | 16 |
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 noms de famille (1891–2000); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the xinhua-italian-manual register. 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)Cilia 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 German, ) Cilja: weibl. Vom., Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In cdo, A sigh ； to Righ, to la- ment ； painful regrets, ah ！ alas ！ an interjection of admiration : \chU* (chidy to bewail ； 'fChid ihu、 or ^ckid t、ang、 to sigh ； Jiil (cAitl, long-drawn sighs j chiole^ (chid, in on instant. XSS^ A net for catching liai es; ^3 a net for beasts ； to stop the ^-tTV' 、、- av， as a net does : tch'id, a net for catching hares ； 《cA'/(l ij/etc, a BiuaJl snare.
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
In Latin, nominative/accusative/vocative plural of cilium
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lua, offering, present.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
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)- Lucio Ciliab. 1954ITItalian priest and biblical scholar (born 1954)
- Daniel Ciliab. 1963MTMaltese photographer
- Trevor Ciliab. 1983MTMaltese footballer
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)Evidence
(measured from records)50 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 29 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cilia mean, and where does it come from?
- plural of cilium Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Cilia?
- It depends on the language: in English /ˈsɪ.li.ə/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /θilja/; in Italian /ʃilja/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Cilia?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.3 thousand people named Cilia in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cilia. After it come Mexico, France, United States and Argentina; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Cilia?
- In the United States, the national register counted 454 people named Cilia in 2010, about 1 in 733 thousand residents.
- How common is Cilia compared with other names?
- In Malta, Cilia is the 535th most common surname of 5,132 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cilia?
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/ciliaThe 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, “Cilia” — the 535th most common surname in Malta. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.