Humanverse

Emma vs Emme

American parents have registered 778,172 Emmas since 1880, against 3,613 Emmes. Emma is still ahead, with 12,768 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emma against Emme, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emma Emme

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

Emma 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 2009, when Emma had 17,930 and Emme had 227.

Side by side

  Emma Emme
Total US births 778,1723,613
Most in one year 22,756227
Babies in 2025 12,76880
Estimated living today 570,0003,600
Median age today 1613
Peak year 20032009
Best rank 2nd girls1,116th girls
Rank in 2025 3rd2,276th
First recorded 18801918
Girls / boys 776,439 / 1,7333,613 / 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 Emmas alive today are over 16; half the Emmes are over 13. That is 3 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 Emma Emme
France 176,300125
England and Wales 51,284616
Ireland 26,36424
Scotland 24,27586
Belgium 18,024199
Northern Ireland 4,31336

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: Emma and Emme.