← Back to The Early Middle Ages
Boy · Latin
Sylvester
Say it: sil-VES-ter
Meaning
Latin silvester, 'of the woods'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
His feast on 31 December gave New Year's Eve its name in several European languages.
Its wave through time
Fading since the 1880s
In the United States
- 43,512 babies given this name since 1880
- At its height in 1880, about 1 in 1,200 boys
- 51 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
Early ChristianLatinEnglishItalianGermanPolishHungarianAmerican
The family of the name
Other spellings: Silvester
| French | Sylvestre |
|---|---|
| Spanish | Silvestre |
| Italian | Silvestro |
| Portuguese | Silvestre |
| German | Silvester |
| Polish | Sylwester |
| Russian | Silvestr |
| Hungarian | Szilveszter |
Famous bearers
- Pope Sylvester I, bishop of Rome under Constantine
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- National census records of the 19th and 20th centuries
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.