Humanverse

Emi vs Emily

American parents have registered 898,296 Emilys since 1880, against 4,360 Emis. Emily is still ahead, with 5,461 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emi against Emily, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emi Emily

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

Emily 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 2025, when Emi had 303 and Emily had 5,461.

Side by side

  Emi Emily
Total US births 4,360898,296
Most in one year 30326,587
Babies in 2025 3035,461
Estimated living today 4,200815,000
Median age today 1127
Peak year 20251999
Best rank 881st girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 881st34th
First recorded 19161880
Girls / boys 4,360 / 0896,487 / 1,809

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 Emilys alive today are over 27; half the Emis are over 11. That is 16 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 Emi Emily
England and Wales 474122,568
Italy 48218,154
Ireland 614,203
Scotland 1613,127
France 8605,830
Switzerland 663,156
Belgium 1282,899
Poland 501,759

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: Emi and Emily.