Cynthia is the Latin form of Greek Kynthia, which means ‘woman from Cynthus’. Mount Cynthus is located on the isle of Delos in Greece. In Greek mythology, this is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.
Cynthia is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Cynthia isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Cynthia ranks 565. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 3 were named Cynthia. In total, there are currently 702,216 people – children, adults and seniors – named Cynthia living in the United States, which is approximately 0.21 % of the entire population.
Cynthia is the Latin form of Greek Kynthia, which means ‘woman from Cynthus’. Mount Cynthus is located on the isle of Delos in Greece. In Greek mythology, this is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.
Cynthia was a rather... rare name, from 1940 to 1980 it was much more popular. In the late 1950s, almost 2% of newborn girls were named Cynthia.
The name Cynthia belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Cynthia is one of only 432 girls names that have been given in the USA in every single year since the beginning of the official name statistics and thus since 1880. However, of course, the name was not equally widespread in all 143 years – the most popular it was far back in the last century: In 1957 Cynthia was one of the top 10 most popular baby girl names in the entire United States - ranking #7 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Cynthia was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1957, when the name Cynthia was at the height of its popularity, 39,412 newborns were named Cynthia by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 312 times and Cynthia occupied place 805 in our ranking of the most popular girls names.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Cynthia. Because: There are women and girls named Cynthia in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Cynthia is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Texas, where Cynthia ranks on place 13. The greatest chance of meeting Cynthia, however, is in Alaska, where one in 165 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 220 women and girls and in Utah, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 425 women and girls for their name before you once get Cynthia as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for girls' names. This is because 6.0% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M.
With seven letters, the name Cynthia has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 6.0% of all girls' names that begin with a C, this first letter is much more common than the average of all letters. And which girls’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Carol.
If your name is Cynthia and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Cynthia, you can simply say:
Cat
Yoyo
Nut
Tiger
Hat
Igloo
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Cynthia
Cynthia
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
Y
N
T
H
I
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
C
Y
N
T
H
I
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Cynthia sounds like this:
