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Esmae vs Esmeralda

American parents have registered 51,751 Esmeraldas since 1880, against 1,527 Esmaes. Esmeralda is still ahead, with 823 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Esmae Esmeralda

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

Esmeralda has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1911 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Esmae had 170 and Esmeralda had 854.

Side by side

  Esmae Esmeralda
Total US births 1,52751,751
Most in one year 1702,484
Babies in 2025 149823
Estimated living today 1,50050,000
Median age today 523
Peak year 20221998
Best rank 1,367th girls133rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,443rd373rd
First recorded 20081911
Girls / boys 1,527 / 051,571 / 180

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 Esmeraldas alive today are over 23; half the Esmaes are over 5. That is 18 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 Esmae Esmeralda
England and Wales 6,032446
Scotland 1258
Ireland 634

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: Esmae and Esmeralda.