Cecily

I love this! It sounds frilly and feminine, but has its own distinctive sound to it.

This name brings to mind sesame and saints. It's a beautiful, old name.

I used to hate this name and find it “overly frilly”. However, I really love it now. I used to prefer Cecilia or Celia but I really like this name. The nickname “Ceci” is also really cute!

St Cecelia was Saint of blindness & music. Someone mentioned Lucy below, well legend has it that Saint Lucy either plucked out her own eyeballs or an emperor plucked them out.

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I love the name Cicely. It's gorgeous. Cecily I'm less keen on because of the shortening Ces (cesspit, cesspool) but it's still nice.

I saw this name used in a book and I just don't care for it. Sounds too prissy. It reminds me of Cecilia. There was a girl in my high school named Cecilia who stole by boyfriend.

My name is Cecily, but when I looked up them meaning of it, I was disappointed. I am not blind. I want my name to be special. There is nothing special about being blind.

I don't know why, but I actually really like this name, maybe even more than 'Cecilia.' It's pretty but not too flow-y or complicated. Even though this name originated in the Middle Ages, it also sounds modern (without sounding tacky).

Love it! Cecily Herondale from the Infernal Devices, such a great character with such a great name.

I prefer Cecily as a unisex name and/or as a diminutive of Cecilia or Cecil. Cecily is cute for either gender, but I think it’s more on the feminine side.

Cecily was my elder daughter’s name. She killed herself 2 years ago. I chose the name as it is a very old fashioned and historic name which derives from Latin. It doesn’t just mean ‘blind’ (although she was) but derives from a family who lived in Ancient Rome and were connected to Cicero. It also means musical, as she was. You don’t pronounce it literally as in “Sessily” but with a typical English shortening of the first vowel syllable as in “Cissely” or “Cussely”, as you would Cecil - the male version. Our names become who we are.

We named our (now) 2 year old daughter Cecily and get nothing but compliments. We call her Ceci (Sessy) for short and have no regrets. Love that when people hear or see the name anywhere they let us know, it’s almost exciting to come across it anywhere!
Our son is Oscar (we love Oscar Wilde) and Cecily Cardew is a character in The Importance of Being Earnest so love the connection of their names. Also Cecily Parsley from Peter Rabbit..

I really dislike the name Cecily (and Cecilia and anything similar). It means blind. Why would you name your child "blind?" Such a sad meaning and a derogatory, depressing name.

Cecily is so sweet. I also love Cecilia. They're both beautiful.

The feminine form of Cecil is nice... I always think of it in conjunction with Celia, Cecile, and Cecilia. Of the four, I much prefer the latter two. (I also always think of "Sicily.") The obvious nickname here would be "Cess" or something similar... or even Lee. Pulling syllables/sounds from different parts of the name is always fine. Any other potential nicknames that also work for Cecile/ia (Ceece, Cee-Cee...) are lovely.

I would hate to ruin this name with a nickname as mentioned above. If you want to call your daughter lily than name her that not Cecily. I also hate Cece and all the other nicknames for this. There's no reason to ruin a pretty name with a silly nickname.

We named our daughter Cecily after watching The Importance of Being Earnest in London whilst my wife was pregnant, although we were aware of the name from the film version and prior to that the Pigeon sisters Cecily & Gwendoline in one of our all time favourite films The Odd Couple.
We love the name- as others have said it does sound very English and elegant and we quite liked that as it stands out a bit but being a name ending in y fits in with more popular names like Lily.
We paired the name with Wren for her middle name as we felt it should go with a one syllable middle name and this fit really well. We also liked mixing the old-fashioned first name with a modern middle name. We thought about hyphenating but decided against this. I occasionally call her CC/Cece especially when singing to her and think this sounds classy too.
If you're thinking about choosing this name for your offspring I'd highly recommend it, if only so there's some other Cecily's around for mine to bump into! Be prepared for people to mispronounce regularly though. Overall impressions are people really seem to like it and our beautiful girl really seems to fit the name. Contrary to previous posts suggesting it may be babyish I was worried it sounded a bit too grown up. I think the name will really suit her as an adult and hope she will love it too. Hello to all you Cecilys out there. I've set up a Facebook page for people of that name so feel free to join and say hi if you like.

I love Cecily and I love nicknames Lissy, Cilla and Lily (as in ceci-ly - ly - lyly - Lily).
I know this name sounds more child-like and immature, but people get used to other people's names very quickly and there are people with various ages that bear names that used to be nicknames or are nicknames. Once you meet an adult Cecily, you wouldn't be able to imagine a child Cecily (mums always perceive their offspring as babies, no matter how serious their names are).
Cecily does remind me of laces and small toddler girls, but it also reminds me of English princesses and medieval times. It also sounds really delicate, yet musical and fun.
I would avoid the nickname Sissy, where I come from, sise is the word for breasts, so I have that association.

Reminds me of cess pool. It's a pity really, that it's not pronounced Sea-suh-Lee instead of Sess-uh-Lee...

Sorry, actually Cicely is "sis a lee" but I still like Cecily better.

Please don't use this name because I want to use it one day! Understand that most people don't know the meanings of names... I also don't like the alternate spellings, I liked Cicely until I found out it was pronounced like Cecily not Sicily (as in Italy). I love this name so much.

This is my name. I have really loved having this name, although sometimes it seems a bit fancy for my personality. I never really knew that the name meant blind. I am a visual arts teacher, so I think that is a bit ironic. I am a little sad that the name has become more popular, as I have enjoyed being the only one most people know.

My eldest daughter (who is three) is named Cecily. We abbreviate it to Cece, and her last name also begins with C, so it could be CC if she prefers. We get a lot of compliments on the name, and I love meeting (usually older) women with the name.

I LOVE the name Cecily. I think it's disappointing that the name means "blind" but still would use it on a chlid. I especially like the combination Cecily Luna.

I love Cecily so much. It's not a name I would name my kid, partly because of pronunciation errors (sə-SEEL-ee) and partly because it sounds bad with my last name (Cecily Yunevich? Ugh.) But it's pretty and not overused, and there are way too many Dayanaras and McKaylas, Westons and Eastons out there. The world needs more Cecilys.

Having lived with the name Cecily for the last 60 years I would like to say that I love my name, it's uniqueness, people's inability to pronounce it and the comments that it provokes; having it teamed with my middle name of Mackenzie makes me feel very special and distinguished. Thank you Mum and Dad
:o).

My name is Cicily although the spelling is different they are pronounced the same. Growing up I hated it. As a child anything unusual or different can be a door to relentless teasing, but as I got older I grew to like it. Reading some of your impressions of the name actually made me love it more. Thank you so much for your insight.

I think Cecily is a lovely name of antiquity that deserves a comeback. My 14x great grandmother was named Cecily (born about 1560 in England). Her daughter and granddaughter, were also named Cecily, except spelled Cicely.

I love this name and don't particularly care that it means blind (there are so many names with distasteful meanings that are popular, so why not this one?) or that it reminds some people of cess-pool (not me). However, I would not recommend the previous poster's suggestion of spelling it Sessily, partly because that looks illiterate, but mostly because it *does* look like sessile, which occasionally means what she said but more commonly refers to creatures that don't move during their lives. Unlike the meaning of blindness, which most people won't know, or the echoes of cesspools, which at least isn't evoked by the spelling, Sessily looks blatantly like Sessile, which could be more than a bit embarrassing if she grows up to study biology.

I can't believe how beautiful this name is. When I hear it it reminds me of a sweet, intelligent, and polite girl. It also sounds very well educated, which I love.

All I can think of is cesspools, which is not a good association. Also, I just read that "cess" is a slang term for marijuana. Not good.

This name would make the bearer sound amazing, beautiful, smart-sophisticated. Lovely name! :)

I've already commented on this name, but I just wanted to add that, though I still love this name (its sound is one of the most elegant/beautiful out there), I love the spelling Sessily, which mirrors the botanical term "sessile," meaning that the leaf issues directly from the stem of the plant, rather than by a petiole. In my mind this reflects "close to the heart," and I like this connotation much better than "blind."

I loved this name from the moment I read it in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest. I have not heard it anywhere else and think it would be a unique, old fashioned sounding name and a great alternative to Cecilia.

This is an elegant and pretty sounding name. It also sounds rather upperclass, which I like.

I have never heard a name more elegant than Cecily. And not even the "blind" association puts me off--I see it as being naive/innocent rather than in need of glasses.

Cecily is such a sweet name. It has a little flair that Cecelia, though I love, lacks.

What I love about this name is that it is the uniquely English form - no stuffy Cecilia or Cecile - and it is all the more elegant for it. Beautiful and balanced. I don't know why, but it makes me think of the sound of little tinkly bells! Make of that what you will!

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I wouldn't worry so much about the literal meaning, because:

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1. 'Blind' is not even the true origin of the name - it actually derives from a Roman family name which happened to sound like the word for 'blind', hence the confusion. Little known fact!

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2. If the 'blind' association is still putting you off, you could try taking it less literally and thinking of it in the sense of 'not hung up on appearances', or another positive sense.

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3. The namesake St Cecilia was the patron saint of music - a lovely association, no?

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And to the poster who said that they know plenty of men with this name - are you sure they're not Cecil? Because I find it very hard to believe there is a corner of the world where packs of male Cecilys roam! To me, it's such a feminine name.

I didn't like this name the first time I heard it, which was from the TV show "Road to Avonlea". There was a character named Cecily King, who had a sister named Felicity, another name I didn't like when I first heard it. Now I love both names, especially Cecily. I think it's a classy, sophisticated name that works well for a young girl as well as grown women. I also like the fact that it's not very popular. The only think I don't like about this name is the meaning, but I wouldn't let that stop me from using this name.

This is a horrible name! It's unisex because I know a lot of people (men) with this name!

I think that the pronunciation of this name is very pretty. I like the rare variant "Cessily" better. The character Cessily Kincaid from New X-men has this name, and her name comes from a girl that her creators met at a camp and then used the name as a roleplay better. Too many Cs get me lost in Cecily.

My older sister's name is Cecily and I don't know her personal opinion of it but I love it. There are so many Cecilia's and Cecile's but not that many Cecily's. It sounds very elegant in an old-fashioned but not completely used up way. It also helped me learn to spell, to this day I still think of the "Cecily Rule" when I read things with soft c's in them.

I love the soft c's in the name.

Cecily is a very pretty name.

Very cute. Suits a little kid very well!

I really like the name, but I dislike the meaning. Can you actually think of naming your new baby girl "dim-sighted"? If anyone found out the meaning, she would receive endless teasing. And what if she turned out blind? People would think you picked the name on purpose.

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It is a very cute name though. :)

Cecily is radiantly beautiful. It's the name of one of the characters in L.M. Montgomery's "The Golden Road" and "The Story Girl."

Cecily is a pretty name, but it does conjure up images of extremely posh chinless wonders for me. Yah, yah, sewpah!