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Emil vs Emilyn

American parents have registered 33,230 Emils since 1880, against 1,525 Emilyns. Emil is still ahead, with 155 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emil against Emilyn, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emil Emilyn

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

Emil 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 2011, when Emil had 106 and Emilyn had 90.

Side by side

  Emil Emilyn
Total US births 33,2301,525
Most in one year 1,01296
Babies in 2025 15525
Estimated living today 9,6001,500
Median age today 4513
Peak year 19172012
Best rank 137th boys2,016th girls
Rank in 2025 1,267th5,099th
First recorded 18801948
Girls / boys 134 / 33,0961,525 / 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 Emils alive today are over 45; half the Emilyns are over 13. That is 32 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 Emilyn
England and Wales 1,1826

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 Emilyn.