Humanverse

Emmalene vs Emmanuel

American parents have registered 91,451 Emmanuels since 1880, against 461 Emmalenes. Emmanuel is still ahead, with 2,035 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emmalene 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 1939, when Emmalene had 9 and Emmanuel had 31.

Side by side

  Emmalene Emmanuel
Total US births 46191,451
Most in one year 212,868
Babies in 2025 72,035
Estimated living today 36088,000
Median age today 1218
Peak year 20142008
Best rank 5,993rd girls145th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd179th
First recorded 19171898
Girls / boys 461 / 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 Emmalenes are over 12. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Emmalene Emmanuel
England and Wales 75,652

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: Emmalene and Emmanuel.