Sylwester
given name · Polish · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sylwester is a given name, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Polish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: New Year's Eve.
- PLPoland1 in 726◐
- SKSlovakia1 in 2K
- NGNigeria1 in 5.6K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈92K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 394 ●
- 1 in 726 ◐
across 13 countries
recorded for this name
521K records
Official registry-verified
Poland
Spellings & scripts●
3 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Sylvester in US United States, NG Nigeria, GB United Kingdom and 9 more, Silvester in FI Finland, SK Slovakia, CZ Czechia, Сильвестр in UA Ukraine, RU Russia and Sil'Vestr in LV Latvia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
New Year's Eve
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | #165 | 52,711△ | 10K rec. | 1 in 726 | 53K | Sylwester | 134 |
| US United States | — | 15,735 | 405K rec. | 1 in 21K | 19K | Sylvester | 394 |
| NG Nigeria | #566 | 12,972 | 22K rec. | — | — | Sylvester | 106 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 12,004 | 22K rec. | — | 3 | Sylvester | 122 |
| BR Brazil | — | 10,520△ | 26 rec. | 1 in 20K | 13K | — | 3 |
| UA Ukraine | #753 | 4,453 | 5.7K rec. | — | — | Сильвестр | 16 |
| HU Hungary | — | 4,443△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 2.2K | 4.4K | — | 2 |
| DE Germany | — | 3,664 | 4.9K rec. | — | 1 | Sylvester | 95 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 3,415 | 4.5K rec. | — | — | Sylvester | 56 |
| AU Australia | — | 3,339 | 7K rec. | — | 1 | Sylvester | 93 |
| CA Canada | — | 3,208 | 7.2K rec. | — | 4 | Sylvester | 108 |
| DK Denmark | — | 2,642△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 2.2K | 2.6K | — | 2 |
Roughly 53K people in Poland bear this name (about 1 in 726). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Polish291K98%
- English1.7K1%
- German1.1K1%
- Norwegian Bokmål9121%
- Finnish6521%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Polish | 291,196 | 98% |
| English | 1,721 | 1% |
| German | 1,083 | 1% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 912 | 1% |
| Finnish | 652 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Sylwester is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Polish, Silvester
as a namePolish Personal Names (CIA Foreign Names Studies, ch. 24)
Polish form of SILVESTER .
as a word
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1960 | 4 |
| 1961 | 5 |
| 1963 | 4 |
| 1965 | 5 |
| 1966 | 6 |
| 1969 | 6 |
| 1971 | 7 |
| 1972 | 8 |
| 1973 | 12 |
| 1974 | 15 |
| 1975 | 18 |
| 1976 | 12 |
| 1977 | 14 |
| 1978 | 21 |
| 1979 | 10 |
| 1980 | 18 |
| 1981 | 18 |
| 1982 | 9 |
| 1983 | 14 |
| 1984 | 14 |
| 1985 | 5 |
| 1986 | 12 |
| 1987 | 5 |
| 1989 | 5 |
| 1990 | 5 |
| 1991 | 6 |
| 1992 | 5 |
| 1998 | 4 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 28 years between 1960–1998. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Sylwester Braunb. 1909PLPolish photographer (1909–1996)
- Stanisław Barejab. 1929PLnot in their usual namePolish film director (1929-1987)
- Sylwester Chęcińskib. 1930PLPolish film director (1930-2021)
- Sylwester Maciejewskib. 1955PLPolish actor
- Tomasz Beksińskib. 1958PLnot in their usual namePolish journalist (1958-1999)
- Piotr Wawrzykb. 1967PLnot in their usual namePolish lawyer, political scientist, politician
- Janusz Szromb. 1968PLnot in their usual namePolish jazz vocalist and composer (born 1968)
- Sylwester Chruszczb. 1972PLPolish politician
- Sylwester Szmydb. 1978PLPolish cyclist
- Sylwester Bednarekb. 1989PLPolish high jumper
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 27 sources across 13 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 210 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Sylwester?
- We estimate roughly 92 thousand people bear Sylwester (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
- In which country does Sylwester have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 53 thousand people bear Sylwester in Poland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled sylwester.
- Where is Sylwester most common?
- Sylwester is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 726 people carrying it.
- How common is Sylwester compared with other names?
- In Poland, Sylwester is the 165th most common given name of 66,904 given names recorded there.
- Is Sylwester a male or female name?
- Sylwester is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Sylwester mean?
- Recorded meaning: New Year's Eve
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sylwesterThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Sylwester” — the 165th most common given name in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.