Esme vs Esmerelda

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Esme Esmerelda

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 59 years in which either name was published, Esme for 44 years and Esmerelda for 15 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

• 1913–1961 Esme ahead
• 1971–1980 Esmerelda ahead
• 1981 Esme ahead
• 1982 Esmerelda ahead
• 1983–1984 Esme ahead
• 1985 Esmerelda ahead
• 1986–1989 Esme ahead
• 1990–1992 Esmerelda ahead
• 1993–2025 Esme ahead

Side by side

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 Esmereldas alive today are over 18; half the Esmes are over 5. That is 13 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Esme Oregon (2.8×), Minnesota (2.5×), Washington (2.4×)
• Esmerelda Texas (7.1×), California (4.4×)

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.

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

• Esme vs Esmeralda
• Esme vs Esmae
• Esme vs Esma
• Esme vs Esmee
• Esme vs Esmond
• Esmerelda vs Esmeralda
• Esmerelda vs Esmae
• Esmerelda vs Esma