Humanverse

Emelie vs Emerald

American parents have registered 10,056 Emeralds since 1880, against 2,612 Emelies. Emerald is still ahead, with 399 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emelie 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 138 years in which either name was published, Emerald for 87 years and Emelie for 51 years. The lead changed hands 19 times.

12 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Emelie Emerald
Total US births 2,61210,056
Most in one year 76423
Babies in 2025 25399
Estimated living today 2,0009,500
Median age today 2019
Peak year 20032024
Best rank 2,243rd girls708th girls
Rank in 2025 5,099th741st
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 2,612 / 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.

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 Emelie Emerald
England and Wales 303360
Scotland 2912
Ireland 153

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: Emelie and Emerald.