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Emmah vs Emmanuel

American parents have registered 91,451 Emmanuels since 1880, against 956 Emmahs. Emmanuel is still ahead, with 2,035 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emmah against Emmanuel, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emmah Emmanuel

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

Emmanuel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1898 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2008, when Emmah had 78 and Emmanuel had 2,868.

Side by side

  Emmah Emmanuel
Total US births 95691,451
Most in one year 782,868
Babies in 2025 52,035
Estimated living today 95088,000
Median age today 1518
Peak year 20082008
Best rank 2,441st girls145th boys
Rank in 2025 14,942nd179th
First recorded 19981898
Girls / boys 956 / 0372 / 91,079

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 Emmanuels alive today are over 18; half the Emmahs are over 15. 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 Emmah Emmanuel
France 50136,960

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: Emmah and Emmanuel.