Emily
- Pronunciation
- [Eh-mi-ly]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- "Industrious, Eager"
- Origin
- German
About the Name Emily
Emily descends from the Latin Aemilia, the feminine form of the Roman family name Aemilius, from the root aemulus meaning "rival," "emulator," or "eager." The Aemilii were one of the patrician families of ancient Rome, and the name has an unbroken history of use across the Roman Empire's successor cultures. Despite its similarity to Amelia, the two names have separate etymological origins and are not historically related — Emily's English-language line runs through the Latin Aemilia, while Amelia derives from a Germanic root.
The name's English-language popularity owes much to a small number of dominant literary bearers: Emily Brontë (1818–1848, author of Wuthering Heights) and her sister Charlotte; Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), the reclusive American poet whose nearly 1,800 short poems redefined American verse and were almost entirely unpublished during her lifetime; and Emily Post (1872–1960), whose Etiquette (1922) became the foundational American text on social manners.
Emily held the US #1 girls' name rank from 1996 through 2007 — twelve consecutive years, longer than any girls' name's top-spot tenure in the modern post-WWII era. The name's appeal is its perfect tonal balance: classical, literary, instantly readable, three soft syllables that work across formal and informal registers. Common nicknames Em, Emmy, Emmie, and Mily each carry slightly different weight; the rarer Lee occasionally appears as a back-end nickname. International forms include Emilia (Italian/Spanish/Latin), Emelia (alternate spelling), Émilie (French), Emília (Portuguese), and the Polish Emilia.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Emily
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Emily by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1999 with 26,542 girls named Emily (girl rank #1 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #34 for girls (5,451 US births). That's 33 places below its 1999 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 Emily 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 Emily the strongest states are California, New Jersey, Florida.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #10 | 12,185 |
| 2 | New Jersey | #13 | 2,319 |
| 3 | Florida | #13 | 4,899 |
| 4 | Texas | #14 | 8,237 |
| 5 | New York | #15 | 4,529 |
| 6 | Nevada | #16 | 731 |
| 7 | Arizona | #16 | 1,747 |
| 8 | Illinois | #17 | 2,704 |
| 9 | Washington | #17 | 1,691 |
| 10 | New Mexico | #17 | 377 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #80 | 215 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #76 | 127 |
| 3 | Mississippi | #71 | 322 |
| 4 | South Dakota | #64 | 133 |
| 5 | Missouri | #61 | 787 |
| 6 | Maine | #60 | 179 |
| 7 | Iowa | #59 | 409 |
| 8 | Michigan | #53 | 1,275 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #51 | 810 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #47 | 795 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Emily in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amalia | Spanish Form Of Amelia Industrious | Female | Spanish |
| Amelia | Defender ANSELMA | Female | German |
| Amelie | Hard-Working | Female | French |
| Amy | Dearly Loved: Beloved. | Female | French |
| Emilie | German Form Of Emily (Industrious) | Female | German |
| Emma | Whole: Complete. Universal | Female | German |
| Emmalee | Variation Of The Name Emily | Female | English |
| Emmeline | Industrious Hardworking. Variant Of Emily. | Female | French |
| Emmie | Female | English | |
| Emmy | Hardworking. Variant Of Emily. | Female | German |
Famous People Named Emily
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Emily.
- Emily Dickinson — Poet (1830)
Looking for names like Emily?
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 Emily to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Emily 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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