Humanverse

Emily vs Emina

American parents have registered 898,296 Emilys since 1880, against 768 Eminas. Emily is still ahead, with 5,461 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emily Emina

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 Emily had 5,461 and Emina had 27.

Side by side

  Emily Emina
Total US births 898,296768
Most in one year 26,58737
Babies in 2025 5,46127
Estimated living today 815,000760
Median age today 2715
Peak year 19992010
Best rank 1st girls4,023rd girls
Rank in 2025 34th4,878th
First recorded 18801991
Girls / boys 896,487 / 1,809768 / 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 Emilys alive today are over 27; half the Eminas are over 15. That is 12 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 Emily Emina
England and Wales 122,56866
France 5,830345
Switzerland 3,156193
Norway 2,718266
Belgium 2,89911

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: Emily and Emina.