Esme
Esme reached its high-water mark in 2022 at number 304, and has been recorded 10,930 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 298th. About 11,000 Esmes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 5.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Esme boys named Esme
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,930
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 5
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 304th
- Rank in 2025
- 298th
- First recorded
- 1913
- Girls / boys
- 10,920 / 10
How old the living Esmes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,930 babies given the name since 1913, about 11,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 10,000 of them are children and 6 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2020 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 French
Anglicized spelling of French Esmé.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Esmes
- Esme Morgan (born 2000)English footballer
- Esmé Bianco (born 1982)British actress
- Esmé Creed-Miles (born 2000)English actress
- Esme Booth (born 1998)British rower
People named Esme with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Esme is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Esme is most concentrated in Oregon (2.8×), Minnesota (2.5×), Washington (2.4×), Colorado (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular girls’ names the year Esme peaked:
Esme elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Esme | 21,539 | 35th |
| Scotland girls | Esme | 1,557 | 38th |
| Ireland girls | Esme +1 spelling | 824 | 99th |
| France girls | Esmé +2 spellings | 370 | 799th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Esme | 304 | 57th |
| Belgium girls | Esmé | 99 | 655th |
| Switzerland girls | Esme +1 spelling | 70 | 800th |
| France boys | Esmé | 45 | 2,417th |
| Poland girls | Esme | 9 birth registrations | 600th |
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.
Esme: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Esme | 29 | 0.002% | 993rd |
| German girls | Switzerland | Esmé | 10 | 0.001% | 1,050th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Esmé | 15 | 0.003% | 568th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Esme | 13 | 0.003% | 516th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Esme | 2 | 0.003% | 104th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Esmé | 1 | 0.002% | 161st |
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.
Esme: rank by region
In 2025, Esme was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Esmé | 531 | 9 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Esme appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (190th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Esme 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Esme +1 spelling | 109 | 177 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Esme against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.