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Emeli vs Emelia

American parents have registered 14,028 Emelias since 1880, against 1,417 Emelis. Emelia is still ahead, with 488 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emeli against Emelia, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emeli Emelia

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

Emelia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2005, when Emeli had 91 and Emelia had 210.

Side by side

  Emeli Emelia
Total US births 1,41714,028
Most in one year 91701
Babies in 2025 32488
Estimated living today 1,40012,000
Median age today 1710
Peak year 20052019
Best rank 2,057th girls443rd girls
Rank in 2025 4,352nd601st
First recorded 19861880
Girls / boys 1,417 / 014,028 / 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 Emelis alive today are over 17; half the Emelias are over 10. That is 7 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Emeli Emelia
England and Wales 1674,112
Scotland 90178
Ireland 6138
Northern Ireland 1563
Belgium 65

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: Emeli and Emelia.