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Emelia vs Emerald

American parents have registered 14,028 Emelias since 1880, against 10,056 Emeralds. Emelia is still ahead, with 488 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emelia 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Emelia for 117 years and Emerald for 29 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Emelia Emerald
Total US births 14,02810,056
Most in one year 701423
Babies in 2025 488399
Estimated living today 12,0009,500
Median age today 1019
Peak year 20192024
Best rank 443rd girls708th girls
Rank in 2025 601st741st
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 14,028 / 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 Emelias are over 10. That is 9 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 Emelia Emerald
England and Wales 4,112360
Scotland 17812
Ireland 1383

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: Emelia and Emerald.