Humanverse

Emili vs Emilia

American parents have registered 69,121 Emilias since 1880, against 1,923 Emilis. Emilia is still ahead, with 4,682 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emili against Emilia, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emili Emilia

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

Emilia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1997, when Emili had 56 and Emilia had 237.

Side by side

  Emili Emilia
Total US births 1,92369,121
Most in one year 1124,854
Babies in 2025 344,682
Estimated living today 1,90065,000
Median age today 216
Peak year 20062021
Best rank 1,825th girls40th girls
Rank in 2025 4,172nd45th
First recorded 19741880
Girls / boys 1,923 / 069,076 / 45

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 Emilis alive today are over 21; half the Emilias are over 6. That is 15 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 Emili Emilia
Poland 9590,798
England and Wales 15222,999
France 11010,400
Italy 7985,660
Switzerland 734,540
Ireland 101,639
Scotland 61,367

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: Emili and Emilia.