Emir
Masculine · Arabic roots · “prince”
Emir is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,615 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Emir is the Turkish and Bosnian form of an old Arabic title of rank, and the same word English borrowed twice — once as the noun "emir" and once, by a longer road through the Mediterranean, as "admiral". It is two syllables that end on a long, open vowel, which is part of why it carries so well across languages that otherwise share very little.
How old is the name Emir?
Emir first appears in US birth records in 1970 — 55 years ago. The typical Emir is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,600 people named Emir are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Emir most popular?
Emir peaked in 2025, reaching #551 nationally. Today it ranks #551, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Emir appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From amīr (Arabic title) to Emir
The story of Emir
The Arabic title amīr — a commander, then a prince or governor — spread with Arabic itself across North Africa, Anatolia and the Balkans, and was taken up as a personal name in Turkish, Bosnian and Albanian, where it settled into the spelling Emir. Medieval European sailors met the same word at sea: amīr al-baḥr, "commander of the sea", passed through Old French and reached English as admiral. In the United States the name arrived mainly with Turkish and Bosnian families, and its recent climb is a young one — the great majority of American Emirs are still children.
Meaning
prince, commander
From Arabic amīr, from a root meaning "to command". Worth knowing: the Hebrew name Amir, which looks like a sibling, comes from an unrelated word for treetop or sheaf — the resemblance is coincidence, not kinship.
How the name formed
- amīrArabic title
- Amir
- Emir
Related forms: Amir / أمير · Emir · Emir · Amir · Ameer · Əmir
Pronouncing Emir
eh-MEER
Stress on the second syllable in Turkish, Bosnian and Arabic. English speakers who know the dictionary word often say EM-eer or EE-mur instead, so expect to offer the version you want.
Nicknames for Emir
Moderate
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
- 1970
- Most boys named
- 2025546 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #551reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +2.6%546 in 2025, from 532
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.
Emir in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Amir / أمير in Arabic — same name
- Emir in Turkish — same name
- Emir in Bosnian — same name
- Amir in Persian — same name
- Ameer in Urdu — transliteration
- Əmir in Azerbaijani — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Emirs among us
people named Emir are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 3,128 born in 2025 was named Emir
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 Xzavier test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Emir's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Xzavier climbed just as high around 2010, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Xzavier's path sketches the road Emir is walking now.
Emir is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Emir is headed
Emir looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 31% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium 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.
Emir beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Emir in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two short syllables, five letters, and a spelling that already exists in English dictionaries — most people can write it after hearing it once.
- Works without adjustment in Turkish, Bosnian, Albanian and Arabic-speaking settings, which matters in a family that crosses languages.
- A documented history reaching back to medieval Arabic, with a visible descendant in the everyday English word admiral.
- Close enough to the widely used Amir to be recognized, distinct enough to stay its own name.
- Amir is the more familiar spelling in the US, so Emir will be corrected fairly often — on rosters, in email, by well-meaning people who assume a typo.
- Two stress patterns compete: eh-MEER from the name's own languages, EM-eer or EE-mur from English speakers reading the noun. You will be choosing which one to teach.
- The word still means a ruler, and a few people will make the obvious joke about royalty. It passes quickly, and the meaning is also one of the honest pleasures of the name.
- American Emirs are overwhelmingly young children right now, so the name reads as new here even though it is centuries old elsewhere.
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What they receive
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Emir
Masculine · Arabic roots · #551 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Emirs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,600 people named Emir are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Emir in 2025?
- Emir ranks #551 among US boy names in 2025, with 546 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Emir?
- About 1 in every 3,128 US boys born in 2025 was named Emir — 546 in all.
- Will my child share the name Emir with classmates?
- Emir will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Emir
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Jeffrey#552 · Eliseo#550 · Ledger#553 · Drew#553 · Ozzy#548 · Devin#548 · Chosen#555 · Armando#556
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Emir? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Emir and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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