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Emeli vs Emerald

American parents have registered 10,056 Emeralds since 1880, against 1,417 Emelis. Emerald is still ahead, with 399 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emeli against Emerald, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emeli Emerald

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

Emerald has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1904 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Emeli had 69 and Emerald had 126.

Side by side

  Emeli Emerald
Total US births 1,41710,056
Most in one year 91423
Babies in 2025 32399
Estimated living today 1,4009,500
Median age today 1719
Peak year 20052024
Best rank 2,057th girls708th girls
Rank in 2025 4,352nd741st
First recorded 19861904
Girls / boys 1,417 / 09,518 / 538

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 Emeralds alive today are over 19; half the Emelis are over 17. 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 Emeli Emerald
England and Wales 167360
Scotland 9012
Ireland 63

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: Emeli and Emerald.