Humanverse

Esmee vs Esmeralda

American parents have registered 51,751 Esmeraldas since 1880, against 860 Esmees. Esmeralda is still ahead, with 823 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Esmee against Esmeralda, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Esmee Esmeralda

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

Esmeralda has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1911 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Esmee had 78 and Esmeralda had 825.

Side by side

  Esmee Esmeralda
Total US births 86051,751
Most in one year 782,484
Babies in 2025 47823
Estimated living today 86050,000
Median age today 823
Peak year 20191998
Best rank 2,305th girls133rd girls
Rank in 2025 3,296th373rd
First recorded 20001911
Girls / boys 860 / 051,571 / 180

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 Esmeraldas alive today are over 23; half the Esmees are over 8. That is 15 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 Esmee Esmeralda
France 5,345 Esmée1,665
England and Wales 2,611446
Belgium 2,037 Esmée126
Switzerland 100 Esmée177
Scotland 1368
Ireland 66 Esmée4
Poland 329

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: Esmee and Esmeralda.