Humanverse

Emile vs Emilie

American parents have registered 26,661 Emilies since 1880, against 9,289 Emiles. Emilie is still ahead, with 170 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emile Emilie

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, Emilie for 121 years and Emile for 25 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Emile Emilie
Total US births 9,28926,661
Most in one year 171660
Babies in 2025 70170
Estimated living today 4,20021,000
Median age today 4026
Peak year 19222003
Best rank 478th boys454th girls
Rank in 2025 2,091st1,309th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 648 / 8,64126,654 / 7

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 Emiles alive today are over 40; half the Emilies are over 26. That is 14 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 Emile Emilie
France 172,135199,550
Belgium 4,5576,269
England and Wales 8983,860
Switzerland 6912,601
Scotland 6562
Ireland 35330
Poland 2190

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: Emile and Emilie.