Emilia
Feminine
Emilia is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 69,076 girls against 45 boys since 1880.
Emilia belonged to one of the great families of the Roman Republic, and the road their consul built across northern Italy still gives its name to Emilia-Romagna. Boccaccio gave the name to a heroine in the fourteenth century; Shakespeare gave it to Desdemona's outspoken companion in Othello. It has been said aloud in Italian, Spanish, Polish and English mouths for centuries, and the four syllables come out much the same in all of them.
How old is the name Emilia?
Emilia was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Emilia is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 65,000 people named Emilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Emilia most popular?
Emilia peaked in 2021, reaching #40 nationally. Today it ranks #45, 5 places below that high. See the whole 2021 chart.
Emilia appears on these lists:
- Transatlantic hits: loved on both sides of the ocean
- America's top 100 names right now
- Vowel names: soft starts from A to O
- The steadiest names in America
- Four-syllable names that carry
- Six-letter names in current use
- all guides
Works in Italian families too:
Where it comes from
From Aemilius to Emilia
The story of Emilia
The name begins as Aemilia, the feminine of Aemilius, one of the patrician family names of the Roman Republic. In the second century BC an Aemilius laid the great road north from Rimini, and the region of Emilia-Romagna carries that name to this day. It reached literature through Boccaccio's Teseida, which Chaucer reworked into the Knight's Tale — his heroine appears as Emelye, the ancestor of English Emily. Shakespeare used the older Latin form directly in Othello and again in The Winter's Tale, and Italian, Spanish and Polish kept Emilia unchanged, which is how the spelling came back into English-speaking use.
Meaningscholars disagree
Traditionally linked to Latin aemulus, "rival" or "striving to equal"
Emilia is the feminine of the Roman family name Aemilius. The usual reading connects it to Latin aemulus, "rival, emulating." But Roman family names of that age often came from Etruscan, and a good number of scholars treat Aemilius as one of those — old, inherited, and not translatable. Worth knowing too that Emilia and Amelia are not the same name at root: Amelia descends from Germanic Amalia, from amal, "work." The two have blurred together in English, but they arrived from different directions.
Cultural footprint
Emilia Clarke (b. 1986) — Game of Thrones' Daenerys Targaryen
Emilia Jones (b. 2002) — Starred in CODA, the Oscar Best Picture winner
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Aemilius
- Aemilia
- Emilia
- Emily
Related forms: Emilia · Emilia · Emilia · Emily · Émilie · Emiliya
Pronouncing Emilia
eh-MEE-lee-uh
Four syllables, stress on the second. Many American speakers say uh-MEE-lee-uh, which sounds almost identical to Amelia. In Italian and Spanish the ending compresses to eh-MEE-lyah, and Polish speakers say it much the same way.
Nicknames for Emilia
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 20194,774 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #40reached in 2021
- Change vs 2022
- −0.2%4,677 in 2025, from 4,685
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Emilia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Emilia in Italian — same name
- Emilia in Spanish — same name
- Emilia in Polish — same name
- Emily in English — related form
- Émilie in French — related form
- Emiliya in Russian — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York. International figures from Statistics Canada, Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland. Sources
Emilias among us
people named Emilia are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 344 born in 2025 was named Emilia
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Alicia test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Emilia's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alicia climbed just as high around 1984, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alicia's path sketches the road Emilia is walking now.
Emilia sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Emilia is headed
Emilia should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Emilia beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Emilia in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled identically in Italian, Spanish and Polish, so relatives in several languages can read it without adjustment.
- A documented written record stretching from Republican Rome through Boccaccio and Shakespeare to the present day, with no long gaps.
- Ready-made short forms already in wide use — Emi, Mila, Millie, Lia — so nothing has to be invented.
- Also charts in Canada, England and Wales, and Scotland, which makes it recognizable well beyond the US.
- Amelia and Emily are both common, and all three sound close. Expect to spell Emilia out fairly often, and to hear it read back as Amelia.
- Its rise here is recent, so most American Emilias are still young children rather than adults — the name reads as current rather than inherited.
- Mila and Emma, two of its natural short forms, are established names on their own, so a child may meet classmates who carry them in full.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Emilia to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Emilia
Feminine · #45 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Emilias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 65,000 people named Emilia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Emilia in 2025?
- Emilia ranks #45 among US girl names in 2025, with 4,677 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Emilia?
- About 1 in every 344 US girls born in 2025 was named Emilia — 4,677 in all.
- Will my child share the name Emilia with classmates?
- Emilia will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Emilia
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Willow#44 · Nova#46 · Naomi#47 · Mila#43 · Riley#48 · Elena#42 · Abigail#41 · Eloise#49
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Emilia? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Emilia and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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