Emily

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Emily boys named Emily

By the numbers

Total US births

898,296

Estimated living today

815,000

Median age today

27

Peak year

1999

Best rank

1st

Rank in 2025

34th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

896,487 / 1,809

How old the living Emilys are

born that year still alive today

Of the 898,296 babies given the name since 1880, about 815,000 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 187,000 of them are children and 22,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1998 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

English form of a gens name from aemulus (“rival, emulator”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Emilys

• Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)American poet
• Emily Brontë (1818–1848)English novelist and poet
• Emily Blunt (born 1983)British actress
• Emily Greene Balch (1867–1961)American economist and writer
• Emily Watson (born 1967)English actress
• Emily Ratajkowski (born 1991)American model and actress
• Emily Deschanel (born 1976)American actress, television producer, and film producer
• Emily Osment (born 1992)American actress and singer

People named Emily with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Emily is most common

• CA98,990
• TX67,452
• NY59,803
• PA42,415
• IL40,825
• OH38,928
• FL37,099
• MI30,862
• NJ25,626
• GA25,234

Relative to how many babies each state records, Emily is most concentrated in New Hampshire (1.6×), Nevada (1.5×), Alaska (1.5×), Vermont (1.5×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1999

The most popular girls’ names the year Emily peaked:

• Emily
• Hannah
• Alexis
• Sarah
• Samantha
• Ashley

All the names of 1999

Emily elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Emily: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Emily is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.51% of children were given it – 320 of them.

Emily: rank by region

In 2025, Emily was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Emily was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Italy.

In 2025, Emily was given 2 times or more in 14 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Emily appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (53rd), Province of Antwerp (67th), Province of Flemish Brabant (108th), Province of East Flanders (188th) and Brussels-Capital Region (244th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Emily by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Emily among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Emily lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,861 women called Emily were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 45 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 7 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Emilia
• Emilio
• Emiliano
• Emil
• Emilie
• Emilee
• Emile
• Emir
• Emi
• Emiliana
• Emili
• Emiko

Emily against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Emily vs Emilia
• Emily vs Emilio
• Emily vs Emiliano
• Emily vs Emil
• Emily vs Emilie
• Emily vs Emilee

Compare Emily with a name of your own