Humanverse

Emmily vs Emmy

American parents have registered 12,963 Emmys since 1880, against 973 Emmilys. Emmy is still ahead, with 695 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emmily 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

Emmy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1997, when Emmily had 28 and Emmy had 51.

Side by side

  Emmily Emmy
Total US births 97312,963
Most in one year 42695
Babies in 2025 12695
Estimated living today 96012,000
Median age today 2110
Peak year 20082025
Best rank 3,779th girls445th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd445th
First recorded 19761885
Girls / boys 973 / 012,963 / 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 Emmilys alive today are over 21; half the Emmys are over 10. That is 11 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 Emmily Emmy
England and Wales 131,869
Belgium 5792

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: Emmily and Emmy.