Sylvester
About Sylvester
This name of three early popes has been associated in recent years with a cocky cartoon cat ("Thufferin' thuccatash!") and the Italian Stallion hero of the Rocky and Rambo movies (who was born Michael) — and yet we think it just might be ready to move further back into the mainstream.
Sylvester was at its height in the 1920s, when it was in the Top 200, and hung on in the lower rungs of the ladder until 1994. Lately the name has been most visible as a surname — that of Sue Sylvester on Glee. Model Emily Ratajkowski named her son Sylvester Apollo in 2021.
Trivia tidbit--in the 1935 movie Sylvia Scarlett, the young Katharine Hepburn disguises herself as a boy named Sylvester — until she meets Cary Grant!
Pronounced sil-VES-ter.
As of October 2026, Sylvester ranked #2224 in US births in 2025 SSA, peaked at #127 in 1889, Nameberry popularity #509.
Editor's take: The name Sylvester is a boy's name of English, Latin origin meaning "wood, forest".
Popularity & trends
Data table
| Year | US rank | Births | Per million |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | #1,941 | 75 | 39 |
| 2015 | #1,999 | 73 | 38.1 |
| 2016 | #2,108 | 67 | 35.3 |
| 2017 | #2,087 | 67 | 36.2 |
| 2018 | #2,139 | 66 | 36.3 |
| 2019 | #1,998 | 74 | 41.2 |
| 2020 | #2,496 | 52 | 30.1 |
| 2021 | #2,127 | 68 | 38.9 |
| 2022 | #2,112 | 71 | 40.7 |
| 2023 | #2,172 | 67 | 39.2 |
| 2024 | #2,108 | 71 | 41.2 |
| 2025 | #2,224 | 64 | 37.5 |
World rankings
Similar names
These 20 names were selected by our users looking for other names like Sylvester.
- Pascal
- Cecil
- Klaus
- Oswald
- Virgil
- Claude
- Lionel
- Seymour
- Luther
- Clement
- Mortimer
- Neville
- Bartholomew
- Wolfgang
- Lloyd
- Augustine
- Solomon
- Lars
- Hector
- Floyd
Sylvester on lists
Famous Sylvesters
- Sylvester Groth
German actor
- Popes Sylvester I
III
- Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart
American musician, producer, and funk pioneer
- Sylvester Churchill
American Civil War colonel
- Sylvester Samuels aka Lil Ru
American rapper
- Sylvester Croom
American NFL football player and coach
- Robert Sylvester "R." Kelly
American R&B singer
- Michael Sylvester Stallone
American actor, director and producer
- Sylvester Lefort (born Thomas La Ruffa)
French pro wrestler
- Sylvester McCoy (born Percy James Patrick Kent
Smith), Scottish actor
Sylvester in pop culture
- Sylvester the Cat
Looney Tunes character
- Sylvester Marcus
character in movie "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"
- Sylvester "Slice" Walters
character on TV's "Raising the Bar"
- Sylvestre Munsey
character from MK Robinson's "The Absolutely True Story of Exactly What Might Have Happened to Sylvestre Munsey"
- Sylvester
the Duke of Salford, character in "Sylvester" by Georgette Heyer
- Sylvester Pemberton aka The Star
Spangled Kid or Skyman, DC Comics superhero
- Sylvester
donkey in children's book "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" by William Steig
- Sue Sylvester
character on TV's "Glee"
- Sylvester
character in rap opera "Trapped In The Closet"
- Sylvester
character on TV show "Scorpion"