Emma — #2 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Emma

The Social Security Administration has registered 763,546 babies named Emma between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Emma currently holds the #2 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2003, when 22,719 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Emma performed strongest in the 2010s, accumulating 195,028 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Emma shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 61,292 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and New York. In total, SSA state-level files list Emma in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Emma in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 763,546 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.