Emily
Feminine
Emily is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 896,487 girls against 1,809 boys since 1880. See Emily as a boy name
Emily comes down from the Roman family name Aemilius, and it has been at home in English since Chaucer wrote of Emelye in The Knight's Tale. Three light syllables, all of them easy — no consonant in it asks anything of the mouth. It has belonged to English novelists and American poets, and it still turns up on class lists on both sides of the Atlantic.
How old is the name Emily?
Emily was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Emily alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 817,000 people named Emily are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Emily most popular?
Emily peaked in 1996, reaching #1 nationally. Today it ranks #34, 33 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Where it comes from
From Aemilius to Emily
The story of Emily
The name begins with the Aemilii, one of the old patrician families of Rome, whose women were all called Aemilia. Through Italian the name became Emilia, and Boccaccio gave it to a character in his Teseida; Chaucer borrowed the story for The Knight's Tale and wrote her name as Emelye. From there the English form settled into Emily, still uncommon until the eighteenth century and then steadily ordinary. It carried well into literature and letters — an English novelist of the Yorkshire moors and an American poet of Amherst both wore it in the nineteenth century — and it traveled with English speakers to North America and Australia.
Meaningscholars disagree
Usually given as "rival" or "emulating", from Latin aemulus
Emily descends from Aemilia, feminine of the Roman family name Aemilius. The standard reading links that name to Latin aemulus, "rival, striving to equal". But the origins of old Roman gens names are often lost, and some scholars connect Aemilius instead to aemulari in the sense of "eager, industrious", or leave it unexplained. A separate point worth knowing: Emily is not related to Amelia, which comes from the Germanic element amal, "work" — the two names simply grew to sound alike.
Cultural footprint
Emily Dickinson (b. 1830) — Reclusive poet now ranked among America's greatest
Emily Brontë (b. 1818) — Wrote Wuthering Heights
Emily Blunt (b. 1983) — Star of A Quiet Place and Oppenheimer
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Aemilius
- Aemilia
- Emilia
- Emelye
- Emily
Related forms: Émilie · Emilia · Emilia · Emilie · Emilia · Emelie
Pronouncing Emily
EM-i-lee
Stress on the first syllable. The middle syllable often reduces in fast American speech, so it can land closer to EM-uh-lee or even EM-lee — both pass without comment.
Nicknames for Emily
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
- 199826,188 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1reached in 1996
- Change vs 2022
- −16.1%5,451 in 2025, from 6,498
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.
Emily in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Émilie in French — same name
- Emilia in Italian — same name
- Emilia in Spanish — same name
- Emilie in German — same name
- Emilia in Polish — same name
- Emelie in Swedish — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada. Sources
Emilys among us
people named Emily are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 295 born in 2025 was named Emily
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 Jennifer test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Emily's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jennifer climbed just as high around 1970, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jennifer's path sketches the road Emily is walking now.
Emily has held the top-100 across 8 different decades — it has never depended on fashion, and names like that read the same at any age.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Emily is headed
Emily 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.
Emily beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Emily in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A spelling nearly everyone in the English-speaking world already knows; it needs no explanation over the phone.
- Charts in Scotland, England and Wales, and Canada as well as the US, so it crosses borders without becoming a different name.
- Long-established short forms — Em, Emmy, Millie — meaning the name can be dressed up or down at any age.
- A documented line running from Roman family names through Chaucer's Emelye to the modern spelling, unbroken for centuries.
- It sits very close to Emma, Emilia and Amelia, all in wide use. Expect a lifetime of gentle corrections, and the occasional letter addressed to the wrong one.
- There is a large adult generation of Emilys, so a child may share the name with teachers and colleagues more often than with classmates.
- Émilie, Emilie and Emely are all live spellings elsewhere, so people will sometimes ask which one you mean before writing it down.
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What they receive
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Emily
Feminine · #34 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Emilys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 817,000 people named Emily are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Emily in 2025?
- Emily ranks #34 among US girl names in 2025, with 5,451 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Emily?
- About 1 in every 295 US girls born in 2025 was named Emily — 5,451 in all.
- Will my child share the name Emily with classmates?
- Emily will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Emily
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Gianna#33 · Valentina#35 · Scarlett#32 · Layla#36 · Zoe#31 · Avery#37 · Lainey#30 · Grace#38
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Emily? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Emily 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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