Ember
- Pronunciation
- [Em-ber]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Anniversary. Ember Day Is A Day In Lent Devoted To Fasting And Prayer. Also Modern Usage As Rhyming Variant Of Amber.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Ember
Ember descends from the Old English æmyrge meaning "smoldering coal" or "glowing remains of a fire" — the small still-glowing pieces of wood or coal that remain after a fire has burned down. The word carries an inherent register of warmth, persistence, and quiet beauty — qualities that resonate with parents seeking distinctive contemporary girls' names with nature-based imagery.
Ember as a personal name has no significant pre-20th-century history; the name appears in SSA records starting in the 1990s and accelerates dramatically through the 2010s and 2020s. The name belongs to the broader contemporary American category of nature/fire-imagery girls' names — alongside Aurora, Sienna, and Scarlett — that emerged primarily in the 21st century.
The single most influential modern fictional bearer is probably the character Ember in various contemporary young-adult fantasy fiction and animated series. The fictional Ember of Disney/Pixar's 2023 animated film Elemental gave the name an additional cultural anchor for millennial-era parents. Ember climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2005 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 75 by 2022. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built fire-imagery register, the compact two-syllable structure, and the modern visual presence. Common nicknames Em (the dominant short form, also shared with Emma) and the rare Bey each occasionally appear. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially modern American; the related Italian brace (ember/coal) and Spanish brasa are word-translation parallels rather than name variants.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Ember
US Popularity History (2009–2025)
Annual US births named Ember by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2024 with 2,172 girls named Ember (girl rank #137 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #154 for girls (1,952 US births). That's 17 places below its 2024 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Ember Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Ember the strongest states are Wyoming, Montana, Alaska.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | #46 | 75 |
| 2 | Montana | #57 | 130 |
| 3 | Alaska | #64 | 102 |
| 4 | Idaho | #72 | 219 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | #80 | 384 |
| 6 | Arkansas | #90 | 271 |
| 7 | South Dakota | #97 | 99 |
| 8 | Oregon | #100 | 324 |
| 9 | West Virginia | #101 | 164 |
| 10 | Utah | #102 | 363 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #648 | 71 |
| 2 | New York | #561 | 258 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #552 | 93 |
| 4 | Maryland | #444 | 131 |
| 5 | Connecticut | #406 | 41 |
| 6 | California | #373 | 901 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #286 | 203 |
| 8 | Texas | #279 | 1,109 |
| 9 | Illinois | #279 | 385 |
| 10 | Mississippi | #275 | 109 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Ember in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Ember?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Ember to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Ember against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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