Cornelius
Just 46 men in Poland carry it, and no boy has been given it this century: most Poles will never meet one. A Latin name from cornu, "horn", it survives in Poland mainly as Kornel.
Cornelius Pronunciation
Cornelius is pronounced tsor-NEL-yoos (/t͡sɔrˈnɛljus/).
What Cornelius means
Where Cornelius comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Cornelius comes from Latin, from the old Roman family name of the gens Cornelia. That family was one of the largest in Rome, and its name is usually linked to cornu, the Latin word for horn. In Polish the short meaning stays plain: róg, horn.
The horn belonged to many Romans of rank. Lucius Cornelius Sulla held Rome as dictator. The Scipiones, who broke Carthage, were Cornelii too. A different Cornelius stands in the Acts of the Apostles, a centurion at Caesarea and, by that account, the first non-Jew baptised. A third, Pope Cornelius, led the church in the third century and is counted among its saints.
Poland kept the name in shorter shape. Kornel is the everyday variant, and Kornelia carries it across to daughters. Read a class register in a Polish school and Kornel sits near the front. The root under all of them is still cornu, the horn.
How many people are named Cornelius
1 in 464048 men in Poland is named Cornelius. 46 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5602 among male names.
Cornelius as a middle name
Cornelius is a first name for 46 men in Poland and a middle name for another 36, a 56/44 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1342nd, between Chukwuemeka (36) and Hali̇l (36).
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#1340 Chidera36
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#1341 Chukwuemeka36
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#1342 Cornelius36
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#1343 Hali̇l36
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#1344 Ingo36