Emma

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Emma boys named Emma

By the numbers

Total US births

778,172

Estimated living today

570,000

Median age today

16

Peak year

2003

Best rank

2nd

Rank in 2025

3rd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

776,439 / 1,733

How old the living Emmas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 778,172 babies given the name since 1880, about 570,000 are alive — 73 in every hundred. Roughly 316,000 of them are children and 34,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2009 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 Germanic languages

Brought to England by the Normans; short form of compound given names beginning with a Frankish prototheme Ermin- or Irmin- "entire", from Proto-Germanic *ermunaz.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Emmas

• Emma Watson (born 1990)English actress
• Emma Goldman (1869–1940)Russian-born American anarchist
• Emma Stone (born 1988)American actress and producer
• Emma Thompson (born 1959)English actress and screenwriter
• Emma Roberts (born 1991)American actress, singer, model and producer
• Emma Raducanu (born 2002)British tennis player
• Emma Bunton (born 1976)British singer
• Emma Morano (1899–2017)Italian supercentenarian

People named Emma with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Emma is most common

• CA62,954
• TX59,629
• NY38,550
• PA34,738
• FL30,274
• OH28,254
• IL26,424
• NC25,168
• GA24,539
• MI19,924

Relative to how many babies each state records, Emma is most concentrated in Nevada (1.5×), Alaska (1.5×), Mississippi (1.4×), Utah (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2003

The most popular girls’ names the year Emma peaked:

• Emily
• Emma
• Madison
• Hannah
• Olivia
• Abigail

All the names of 2003

Emma elsewhere

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.

Emma: births by region

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, Emma is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.91% of children were given it – 567 of them.

Emma: rank by region

In 2025, Emma was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium. It has come first somewhere in 15 different years.

In 2024, Emma was among the 10 most common names in 7 regions of Spain. It has come first somewhere in 2 different years.

In 2024, Emma was among the 10 most common names in 17 regions of Italy, and first in 1 of them. It has come first somewhere in 12 different years.

In 2025, Emma was given 2 times or more in 15 regions of Poland.

In 2024, with the country taken in 5 parts rather than 21, Emma appears in the lists for Nord-est (3rd), Nord-ovest (8th) and Centro (8th).

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Emma appears in the lists for Province of Liège (1st), Province of Flemish Brabant (2nd), Province of Luxembourg (2nd), Province of Antwerp (4th), Province of Hainaut (4th), Brussels-Capital Region (6th), Province of Namur (9th), Province of Limburg (11th), Province of East Flanders (15th), Province of Walloon Brabant (15th) and Province of West Flanders (28th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, 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.

Emma by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Emma 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.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Emma lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 47,562 women called Emma were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Emmanuel
• Emmett
• Emmitt
• Emmy
• Emmie
• Emmalee
• Emmalyn
• Emmaline
• Emmet
• Emmeline
• Emmalynn
• Emmit

Emma against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Emma vs Emmanuel
• Emma vs Emmett
• Emma vs Emmitt
• Emma vs Emmy
• Emma vs Emmie
• Emma vs Emmalee

Compare Emma with a name of your own