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Emerald vs Emery

American parents have registered 64,249 Emerys since 1880, against 10,056 Emeralds. Emery is still ahead, with 3,513 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emerald against Emery, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emerald Emery

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, Emery for 129 years and Emerald for 17 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Emerald Emery
Total US births 10,05664,249
Most in one year 4233,513
Babies in 2025 3993,513
Estimated living today 9,50055,000
Median age today 198
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 708th girls74th girls
Rank in 2025 741st74th
First recorded 19041880
Girls / boys 9,518 / 53843,837 / 20,412

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 Emerys are over 8. That is 11 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 Emerald Emery
England and Wales 360211
Scotland 1210
Ireland 36

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: Emerald and Emery.