Cecily's meaning

[DreamGem]

I was thinking of making a first + middle combination that made a phrase as a way to make Cecily more prettier to DH. As in Cecily Amoret (Cecily meaning blind, Amoret meaning little love, therefore "blind love"), but that made us both thinking is there "better" meanings. We have reservation with phrases "blind faith", "blind love" and "blind truth", they seem more bleak than inspiring.
So it all boils down does Cecily meaning bothers us more than we love it.

Would you ignore Cecily meaning blind, and still use it
or would you play it around e.g. Cecily Amoret, Cecily True (or use Dilys as means genuine), Cecily Carys...

It's a lovely name and it's meaning wouldn't bother me at all.

It’s a lovely name.

It also wouldn't bother me. Sicily, as in the country, is cute if you want something similar without the meaning attached x

My DD is Cicely. It means blind to self beauty but I picked it because Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music and musicians.

It's such a beautiful name. Justice is blind; love is blind.

It wouldn't bother me at all. For me if a name has a nice meaning that's a bonus, but I don't know what most of my favourite names mean. I wouldn't bother trying to make a 'story' with the first name and middle name either. If a name you love works anyway then great, if not then I'd much rather have a name I like the sound of, than Dilys because I liked the meaning.

It’s much more strongly associated with St Cecelia, the patron saint of music, than with the latin it’s derived from.
Same as eg the name Mary is more associated with being Jesus’s mum than its etymological root meaning ‘bitter’!

It doesn't mean blind. That's a retrospective attempt to assign a meaning to a name. I think Cecily is in the rare category of "just a name". If you think about it, the first words were probably names.

Cecily Joy - “Blind Joy”

I would claim the other meaning - 6th child.

Cecily is the feminine form of Cecil and according to some sites, Cecil was a Welsh name from the Latin for 6th. Others have speculated it came from the Latin for blind but I feel like you could choose to own the other theory and then not worry too much about it.

Just use it

I think you are over thinking

It’s a lovely name with a long history - just use it

NB Cecily Truth sounds like you are religious fanatics

Meanings of names are a bit pointless really. A name is just a name! If you name your DD Cecily then I can't imagine anyone will think 'blind', they will just think 'Cecily'.

I agree with everyone else - it's a very old name, with lots of associations other than its "meaning". It's not like calling a child River or Hope, where the name has a literal meaning in English.

In any case, it being related to "blind" is only one theory. Lots of these Roman family names have rival possible etymologies, usually because the families tried to relate themselves to a character from myth.

In this case, they were making a link to Caeculus, who was "blinded" by the smoke from a fire - it wasn't a reference to a living person's blindness.

But I agree that St Cecilia is the much stronger association. Most people will associate it with music, if anything.

I only found out what DD1’s name meant when speaking to someone at the hospital after she was born.

Name your child something you like the sound of. The meaning is mostly irrelevant unless it means bitch or something.

I'll go against the grain here and admit that the meaning of a name means a lot to me. I am not a religious person so a name that means "Strength from God" or something wouldn't sit well with me.
Same with naming a kid "Tracy Louise" just wouldn't feel right to me.

However I adore the name Cecily and love the meaning that @NotNowFGS and others have described. If it did just mean Blind I would probably look to link a middle name as you are whilst trying to balance that being Blind is not a wholly negative thing. However thats really looking deeply into things!

Name meaning wouldn’t bother me at all - in fact my DC name has not a great meaning either but I don’t think that matters at all and it’s not generally what people think of?

Not a big issue imo. Meaning is the least important thing about a name to me (I love the name Claudia for example, despite it's supposed "meaning"). Far more important are things like being comfortable with a names popularity level, will it likely date, does it work well with the surname, do you like the most common nickname for it, are there any dodgy pop culture associations? etc.

After all, names like Jacob/James, Mary/Maria, Emily/Emilia etc wouldn't be so popular if people cared about a lovely meaning rather than the names sound. Plus the Cecilia variation is quite popular/well used internationally - so I would guess only a few of the people you meet will be aware of Cecily's meaning and of the ones who are, even fewer will care.

By all means pair it with Amora/Amoret, Cara/Carys etc if you want to, but I don't think it's necessary. Cecily is a lovely choice btw - very pretty and elegant.