Emil
The boy's name Emil has been in the national records since 1880, with 33,230 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,267th. About 9,600 Emils are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 45.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Emil boys named Emil
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 33,230
- Estimated living today
- 9,600
- Median age today
- 45
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 137th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,267th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 134 / 33,096
How old the living Emils are
born that year still alive today
Of the 33,230 babies given the name since 1880, about 9,600 are alive — 29 in every hundred. Roughly 2,500 of them are children and 3,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1980 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
From German Emil, from Latin Aemilius, a Roman family name possibly from aemulus (“rival”). Cognate with French Émile.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Emils
- Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919)German chemist
- Emil von Behring (1854–1917)German physiologist who received the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901 for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin
- Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867–1951)Finnish military leader and statesman
- Emil Cioran (1911–1995)Romanian-French philosopher and essayist
- Emil Theodor Kocher (1841–1917)surgeon, laureate of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Medicine
- Emil Zátopek (1922–2000)Czech long-distance runner
- Emil Jannings (1884–1950)German actor
- George Emil Palade (1912–2008)Romanian cell biologist, physician and Nobel laureate
People named Emil with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Emil is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Emil is most concentrated in North Dakota (6.1×), South Dakota (3.5×), Nebraska (3.0×), New Jersey (3.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular boys’ names the year Emil peaked:
Emil elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark boys | Emil | 22,280 | 9th |
| Sweden boys | Emil | 16,749 | 3rd |
| Norway boys | Emil | 13,823 | 1st |
| Poland boys | Emil | 10,638 birth registrations | 69th |
| Austria boys | Emil | 4,605 | 21st |
| Switzerland boys | Emil +1 spelling | 1,886 | 43rd |
| England and Wales boys | Emil | 1,182 | 506th |
| France boys | Emil +1 spelling | 1,080 | 801st |
| Belgium boys | Emil +1 spelling | 879 | 154th |
| Italy boys | Emil | 745 | — |
| Ireland boys | Emil | 131 | 310th |
| Scotland boys | Emil | 79 | 439th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Emil | 3 | 398th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Emil: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Emil | 1,663 | 0.134% | 37th |
| German boys | Switzerland | Émil | 2 | 0.000% | 1,540th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Emil | 186 | 0.043% | 135th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Émil | 5 | 0.001% | 653rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Emil | 29 | 0.044% | 55th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Emil | 1 | 0.027% | 13th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Emil is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.25% of children were given it – 95 of them.
Emil: rank by region
In 2025, Emil was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Emil | 210 | 28 |
| Brussels | Emil | 130 | 9 |
In 2020, Emil was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Emil | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Emil was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Emil | 69 | 28 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Emil | 61 | 18 |
| Lubelskie | Emil | 72 | 10 |
| Lubuskie | Emil | 62 | 9 |
| Łódzkie | Emil | 82 | 13 |
| Małopolskie | Emil | 46 | 65 |
| Mazowieckie | Emil | 77 | 44 |
| Opolskie | Emil | 41 | 17 |
| Podkarpackie | Emil | 32 | 54 |
| Podlaskie | Emil | 61 | 11 |
| Pomorskie | Emil | 92 | 15 |
| Śląskie | Emil | 56 | 50 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Emil | 74 | 5 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Emil | 136 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Emil | 58 | 41 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Emil | 60 | 15 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Emil appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (130th), Province of Flemish Brabant (132nd), Province of East Flanders (179th) and Province of Antwerp (181st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Emil by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 1,449 | 2nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Emil among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Emil +1 spelling | 7,071 | 20,489 |
| Finland girls | Emil | 27 | 65 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Emil lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,440 men called Emil were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Segovia | Emil | 25 | 0.315 | 298 |
| Soria | Emil | 8 | 0.175 | 438 |
| Huesca | Emil | 20 | 0.171 | 450 |
| Burgos | Emil | 30 | 0.165 | 475 |
| Teruel | Emil | 11 | 0.159 | 500 |
| Lleida | Emil | 37 | 0.157 | 548 |
Listed in 44 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 8 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Emil against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.