Humanverse

Emmeline vs Emmie

American parents have registered 10,387 Emmies since 1880, against 6,152 Emmelines. Emmie is still ahead, with 407 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Emmeline against Emmie, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Emmeline Emmie

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, Emmie for 123 years and Emmeline for 23 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Emmeline Emmie
Total US births 6,15210,387
Most in one year 370510
Babies in 2025 284407
Estimated living today 5,9007,600
Median age today 98
Peak year 20172018
Best rank 753rd girls598th girls
Rank in 2025 922nd694th
First recorded 18881880
Girls / boys 6,152 / 010,387 / 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.

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 Emmeline Emmie
England and Wales 2,0244,424
France 1,8153,185
Scotland 54317
Belgium 26158
Ireland 46259
Northern Ireland 7141

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: Emmeline and Emmie.