Emma
- Pronunciation
- [Eh-mah]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Whole: Complete. Universal
- Origin
- German
About the Name Emma
Emma originates from the Old Germanic ermen meaning "whole" or "universal" — a root that appears in older long names like Ermintrude and Ermengarde, of which Emma was historically a short form. By the late Middle Ages Emma had become a standalone name in its own right and entered the English aristocratic register through Queen Emma of Normandy (c. 985–1052), wife to two English kings and mother to Edward the Confessor.
The name had a long quiet stretch through the 17th–18th centuries before its 19th-century revival. Jane Austen's novel Emma (1815), centered on its self-confident, slightly meddlesome heroine Emma Woodhouse, anchored the name in literary memory and helped seed its later resurgence. The modern boom began in the late 1990s; Emma was the US #1 girls' name multiple times in the 2010s and remains in the top 5.
Twenty-first-century associations are dominated by actresses Emma Watson (the Harry Potter films), Emma Stone, and Emma Thompson; earlier, anarchist political philosopher Emma Goldman gave the name a sharper, intellectual edge. Emma's enduring appeal is a kind of friendly classicism — instantly readable, no spelling debate, warm rather than formal. Common nicknames Em and Emmy stay close to the original; the longer formal-name extensions Emmaline and Emmeline have small but loyal followings, and direct variants include the Spanish and Italian Ema and German Emma (unchanged).
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Emma
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Emma by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2003 with 22,719 girls named Emma (girl rank #2 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #3 for girls (12,754 US births). That's 1 places below its 2003 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 Emma 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 Emma the strongest states are Texas, New York, New Jersey.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #1 | 17,678 |
| 2 | New York | #2 | 8,974 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #2 | 4,400 |
| 4 | Arizona | #2 | 3,425 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #2 | 5,543 |
| 6 | Florida | #2 | 10,028 |
| 7 | Utah | #2 | 1,921 |
| 8 | Illinois | #2 | 5,302 |
| 9 | Massachusetts | #2 | 3,157 |
| 10 | California | #3 | 20,308 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #6 | 198 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #6 | 401 |
| 3 | West Virginia | #6 | 705 |
| 4 | District of Columbia | #6 | 331 |
| 5 | Maine | #6 | 482 |
| 6 | Hawaii | #5 | 397 |
| 7 | Mississippi | #5 | 906 |
| 8 | New Mexico | #5 | 654 |
| 9 | Rhode Island | #5 | 451 |
| 10 | Michigan | #5 | 3,655 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Emma in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Emma
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Emma.
- Emma Goldman was a political activist known for her contribution to the development of anarchist political philosophy in the 20th century.
- Emma Thompson — Movie Actress (1959)
- Emma Watson — Movie Actress (1990)
Looking for names like Emma?
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 Emma to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Emma 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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