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Emil vs Emilia

American parents have registered 69,121 Emilias since 1880, against 33,230 Emils. Emilia is still ahead, with 4,682 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emil against Emilia, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emil Emilia

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 146 years in which either name was published, Emil for 100 years and Emilia for 46 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Emil Emilia
Total US births 33,23069,121
Most in one year 1,0124,854
Babies in 2025 1554,682
Estimated living today 9,60065,000
Median age today 456
Peak year 19172021
Best rank 137th boys40th girls
Rank in 2025 1,267th45th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 134 / 33,09669,076 / 45

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 Emils alive today are over 45; half the Emilias are over 6. That is 39 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 Emil Emilia
Poland 10,63890,798
Sweden 16,74911,709
England and Wales 1,18222,999
Norway 13,8232,194
Austria 4,6059,740
France 1,08010,400
Switzerland 1,8864,540
Italy 7455,660
Belgium 8792,220
Ireland 1311,639
Scotland 791,367
Northern Ireland 3405

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: Emil and Emilia.