Humanverse

Esmae vs Esme

American parents have registered 10,930 Esmes since 1880, against 1,527 Esmaes. Esme is still ahead, with 1,032 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Esmae against Esme, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Esmae Esme

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

Esme has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1913 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2018, when Esmae had 132 and Esme had 565.

Side by side

  Esmae Esme
Total US births 1,52710,930
Most in one year 1701,053
Babies in 2025 1491,032
Estimated living today 1,50011,000
Median age today 55
Peak year 20222022
Best rank 1,367th girls304th girls
Rank in 2025 1,443rd298th
First recorded 20081913
Girls / boys 1,527 / 010,920 / 10

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 Esmae Esme
England and Wales 6,03221,539
Scotland 1251,557
Ireland 63824
Northern Ireland 47304

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: Esmae and Esme.