Priscilla
Latin at root, meaning "ancient" or "venerable". Fewer than a hundred women in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met one.
Priscilla Pronunciation
Priscilla is pronounced prees-CHEEL-lah (/prisˈt͡ɕilla/).
What Priscilla means
Where Priscilla comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Priscilla comes from Latin. It is the diminutive of Prisca, and both go back to the adjective priscus, meaning ancient or former. Polish sources render that sense as starożytna, czcigodna, ancient and venerable. So the name spoke of age and standing before anyone wore it.
Then a real woman wore it. Priscilla appears in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul's letter to the Romans, a teacher who worked beside her husband Aquila in the early church. A burial complex north of Rome still keeps the name, the Catacomb of Priscilla. That is where it enters recorded history.
English speakers took the name and held onto it. It never broke into a crowd of nicknames or spelling variants. Priscilla stayed whole.
What it means points backward. The root priscus reaches for what is old and worthy of respect, ancient in the plainest sense.
How many people are named Priscilla
1 in 253301 women in Poland is named Priscilla. 89 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3730 among female names.
Priscilla's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Priscilla as a middle name
Priscilla is a first name for 89 women in Poland and a middle name for another 27, a 77/23 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1383rd, between Pascale (27) and Rosemary (27).
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#1381 Nelli27
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#1382 Pascale27
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#1383 Priscilla27
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#1384 Rosemary27
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#1385 Rufina27