Esmeralda: Meaning of Baby Name Esmeralda

About the Name Esmeralda

Esmeralda descends from the Spanish esmeralda, ultimately from the Greek smaragdos meaning "emerald" — referring to the green precious gemstone. The name has been used continuously across Spanish-speaking and Catholic-influenced naming traditions for centuries.

The name's overwhelming literary anchor is the title character of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris) — the iconic gypsy dancer Esmeralda whose tragic fate at the hands of Archdeacon Frollo and her love for the hunchback Quasimodo became one of the foundational stories of 19th-century French Romantic literature. The Disney 1996 animated film adaptation (and various other film versions) anchored the name in late-20th and early-21st-century American childhood imagination.

Esmeralda has been continuously used in Spanish-speaking American communities for over a century. The name climbed into the US top 200 girls' rank by 2000 and remains in steady use today, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Greek-Spanish-French-Disney pedigree combined with four flowing syllables — the in-built emerald-gemstone register, the strong Victor Hugo literary anchor and Disney cultural anchor, and tonal warmth distinctive to Spanish-language naming. The name reads as both classical-literary and contemporary American. Common nicknames Esme (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm), Es, Mary (back-end shortening, alternate), Ralda, and the rare Mera each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Esmeralda, Esmaralda, and Esmerelda have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Esmeralda (essentially identical across Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/French), Esmaragda (Greek original), and the original Greek smaragdos.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Esmeralda

957

Spanish baby names in our dictionary

559

Spanish female names

68

9-letter E-names in our dictionary

486

E-female names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

29,315

total US births named Esmeralda (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

📈 Rising: Esmeralda climbed 21 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#394 in 2020 → #373 in 2025).

Annual US births named Esmeralda by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 1,745 girls named Esmeralda (girl rank #191 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #373 for girls (823 US births). That's 182 places below its 2007 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.

Where in the US Is Esmeralda 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 Esmeralda the strongest states are California, Arizona, Nevada.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	California	#157	1,977
2	Arizona	#164	360
3	Nevada	#165	147
4	New Mexico	#184	90
5	Texas	#238	1,238
6	Illinois	#278	373
7	Colorado	#347	154
8	Nebraska	#363	26
9	Oregon	#364	102
10	Idaho	#374	27

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Pennsylvania	#811	47
2	Michigan	#791	71
3	Ohio	#783	74
4	Missouri	#773	35
5	Louisiana	#765	18
6	South Carolina	#680	38
7	Maryland	#671	74
8	Tennessee	#658	91
9	New York	#641	240
10	Kentucky	#637	20

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Esmeralda in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Emerald	The Prized Green Emerald Gemstone.	Female	Spanish
Emmie		Female	English
Esmeralda	The Prized Green Emerald Gemstone.	Female	Spanish
Esmerelda	Emerald	Female	Greek
Lala	Equivalent Of English Lara, "Famous; Cheerful."	Female	Hawaiian

Looking for names like Esmeralda?

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Compare Esmeralda to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Esmeralda against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Esmeralda vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Esmeralda vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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