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Emmet vs Emmy

American parents have registered 12,963 Emmys since 1880, against 6,966 Emmets. Emmy is still ahead, with 695 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emmet Emmy

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, Emmet for 76 years and Emmy for 70 years. The lead changed hands 19 times.

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

Side by side

  Emmet Emmy
Total US births 6,96612,963
Most in one year 262695
Babies in 2025 110695
Estimated living today 4,40012,000
Median age today 1210
Peak year 20152025
Best rank 859th boys445th girls
Rank in 2025 1,554th445th
First recorded 18801885
Girls / boys 0 / 6,96612,963 / 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 Emmets alive today are over 12; half the Emmys are over 10. That is 2 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 Emmet Emmy
Ireland 2,134156
England and Wales 1251,869
Northern Ireland 21045

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: Emmet and Emmy.