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Ema vs Emanuela

American parents have registered 4,857 Emas since 1880, against 624 Emanuelas. Ema is still ahead, with 164 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ema against Emanuela, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ema Emanuela

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 131 years in which either name was published, Ema for 128 years and Emanuela for 3 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Ema Emanuela
Total US births 4,857624
Most in one year 16422
Babies in 2025 16412
Estimated living today 4,200580
Median age today 1418
Peak year 20252015
Best rank 1,348th girls5,833rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,348th8,362nd
First recorded 18831918
Girls / boys 4,857 / 0624 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Emanuelas alive today are over 18; half the Emas are over 14. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ema Emanuela
Italy 47611,089
France 6,295360
England and Wales 988229
Switzerland 98860
Belgium 49336
Poland 26221
Ireland 19112

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Ema and Emanuela.