Marceli
A Latin name tied to Mars, the god of war: at root it reads as "young warrior". Most Poles have never met one, and today it sits at the far edge of the country's 500 most-given boys' names.
Marceli Pronunciation
Marceli is pronounced mahr-TSE-lee (/marˈt͡sɛli/).
What Marceli means
Where Marceli comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Marceli comes from the Latin Marcellus, a diminutive of Marcus, and both trace back to Mars, the Roman god of war. The name reads as young warrior of Mars, and in Polish it settles into mały wojownik. The martial root sits under a sound that has grown gentler in Polish use.
Poland has carried the name through real lives. Marceli Bacciarelli painted portraits at the court of King Stanisław August Poniatowski in the eighteenth century, and Marceli Nencki became one of Europe's leading physiological chemists in the nineteenth. Neither man swung a sword. The warrior in the name turned into a quieter kind of resolve.
The variant Marcel travels easily across borders, familiar in France and Germany, while Marcelina turns the name toward a daughter. Marceli keeps a name-day on the sixteenth of January, and a boy might hear it read out at the top of a class register. Under the everyday sound stays the old sense: a small warrior of Mars.
How many people are named Marceli
1 in 4293 men in Poland is named Marceli. 4,972 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #491 among male names.
Marceli's popularity over time
43 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #375 among newborns. It has been falling steadily since 2000.
Where Marceli is most popular
Marceli is most popular in Pomeranian, 46% above the national average (39 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Lower Silesian (+34%) and Masovian (+15%). It is least common in Lubusz and Opole, 78% and 64% below average respectively.
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Pomeranian39 boys born+46%
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Lower Silesian38 boys born+34%
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Masovian74 boys born+15%
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Silesian47 boys born+14%
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Lublin20 boys born+8%
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Łódź24 boys born+5%
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Warmian-Masurian13 boys born0%
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Lesser Poland40 boys born−3%
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Podlaskie11 boys born−8%
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Greater Poland35 boys born−10%
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Świętokrzyskie9 boys born−10%
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Subcarpathian16 boys born−27%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian14 boys born−29%
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West Pomeranian6 boys born−61%
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Opole3 boys born−64%
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Lubusz2 boys born−78%
Marceli as a middle name
Marceli is a first name for 4,972 men in Poland and a middle name for another 3,037, a 62/38 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 151st, between John (3,086) and Klemens (2,885).
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149
3,178Roch
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150
3,086John
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1513,037Marceli
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152
2,885Klemens
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153
2,838Borys
When Marceli celebrates name day
Marceli appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar. The main date is 16 January.