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Emmett vs Emmy

American parents have registered 78,872 Emmetts since 1880, against 12,963 Emmys. Emmett is still ahead, with 2,973 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Emmett 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

Emmett 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 1980, when Emmett had 107 and Emmy had 91.

Side by side

  Emmett Emmy
Total US births 78,87212,963
Most in one year 3,681695
Babies in 2025 2,973695
Estimated living today 59,00012,000
Median age today 810
Peak year 20212025
Best rank 103rd boys445th girls
Rank in 2025 121st445th
First recorded 18801885
Girls / boys 308 / 78,56412,963 / 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 Emmys alive today are over 10; half the Emmetts are over 8. That is 2 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 Emmett Emmy
France 21015,445
England and Wales 8161,869
Ireland 769156
Northern Ireland 22445
Scotland 49216
Switzerland 30178

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: Emmett and Emmy.