Humanverse

Emil vs Emilio

American parents have registered 54,013 Emilios since 1880, against 33,230 Emils. Emilio is still ahead, with 2,397 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emil against Emilio, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emil Emilio

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 82 years and Emilio for 64 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Emil Emilio
Total US births 33,23054,013
Most in one year 1,0122,397
Babies in 2025 1552,397
Estimated living today 9,60048,000
Median age today 4515
Peak year 19172025
Best rank 137th boys154th boys
Rank in 2025 1,267th154th
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 134 / 33,09658 / 53,955

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 Emilios are over 15. That is 30 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 Emilio
Norway 13,823319
Poland 10,63878
France 1,0806,435
Austria 4,605852
Italy 7453,539
Switzerland 1,8861,281
England and Wales 1,1821,322
Belgium 879899
Ireland 13131
Scotland 7930

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 Emilio.