Emmaline vs Emmy
American parents have registered 12,963 Emmys since 1880, against 7,422 Emmalines. Emmy is still ahead, with 695 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Emmaline Emmy
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 143 years in which either name was published, Emmy for 90 years and Emmaline for 53 years. The lead changed hands 17 times.
- 1880–1924 Emmaline ahead, apart from 2 short spells
- 1927–1934 Emmy ahead
- 1935–1937 Emmaline ahead
- 1938–1993 Emmy ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1996–2003 Emmaline ahead
- 2004–2025 Emmy ahead
9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Emmaline | Emmy | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 7,422 | 12,963 |
| Most in one year | 313 | 695 |
| Babies in 2025 | 182 | 695 |
| Estimated living today | 6,300 | 12,000 |
| Median age today | 12 | 10 |
| Peak year | 2014 | 2025 |
| Best rank | 873rd girls | 445th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 1,235th | 445th |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1885 |
| Girls / boys | 7,422 / 0 | 12,963 / 0 |
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 Emmalines alive today are over 12; half the Emmys are over 10. That is 2 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Emmaline Utah (6.4×), Tennessee (3.3×), Idaho (2.8×)
- Emmy Utah (4.0×), Arizona (1.9×), Florida (1.6×)
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 | Emmaline | Emmy |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 29 | 1,869 |
| Belgium | 5 | 792 |
| Scotland | 3 | 216 |
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: Emmaline and Emmy.