BabyNameScore

Emily

EM·ə·lee · 3 syllables

Emily is a familiar, currently well-used name.

87/100

Strong Practical Fit

Balanced across pronunciation, everyday use, lifetime fit and international use.

Name Profile

  1. Pronunciation & Spelling

    Effortless

    A documented English pronunciation is on file: EM-ə-lee.

    91/100

  2. Everyday Use

    Low risk

    Shortens naturally in everyday use, with four established short forms.

    95/100

  3. Growing Up

    Strong lifetime fit

    Works comfortably across child and adult settings.

    82/100

  4. International Use

    Broad international fit

    Works cleanly across the assessed languages and writing systems.

    85/100

NAME DETAILS

COMMON FORMS
Em
Emmy
Millie
Emmie
CLOSE SPELLINGS
Emilee
Emilie
Emmalee
OTHER-LANGUAGE FORMS
Emilia
Émilie
Emilija
ORIGIN & HISTORY

About the name

Emily is the English form of the Latin Aemilia, the feminine of the Roman family name Aemilius, and it belongs to a patrician clan of ancient Rome rather than to a word. The meaning usually printed for it — “rival,” or striving to equal — comes from a proposed link to aemulus, and several sources caution that this is likely folk etymology rather than an established derivation. So the honest position is that the gloss is traditional and unproven. One further correction, because the confusion is constant: Amelia is not a form of this name. It comes from a Germanic root, sounds close by coincidence, and the two became entangled in English partly because George III called his daughter Princess Amelia by the nickname Emily. As with Emilia and Emiliano, the 'rival' gloss for the underlying Aemilius root is a traditional interpretation that several sources caution may be folk etymology rather than settled linguistic fact.

  1. Aemilia (Latin). Traditionally glossed as 'rival' or 'striving to equal/excel,' inherited from the same disputed Latin aemulus root shared with Emilia and Emiliano; some sources also render it as 'industrious.' Notable historical bearers include suffragette leaders Emmeline (Emily) Pankhurst-family figures and the suffragette martyr Emily Davison (1872-1913), who died after stepping in front of King George V's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby in protest for women's suffrage; Emily Post (1872-1960), the American etiquette authority whose name became synonymous with formal manners; and Emily Greene Balch (1867-1961), an American economist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
POPULARITY

Emily over time

United States
#34RANK

Rank #34 gives national context, not a classroom forecast.

Widely recognized, but less suited to parents seeking rarity. Ranked #34 in the U.S., 2025.

SourceU.S. Social Security Administration · 2025 release

Pronunciation & Forms

SAY IT

EM·ə·lee

STRESS ON THE FIRST SYLLABLE

Say Emily as EM-uh-lee. British and American speakers land in the same place and there is no recorded misreading. The spelling drifts rather than fails: Emilee, Emilie and Emmalee all circulate. The names it genuinely gets tangled with are Emilia, which is its own European cognate, and Amelia, which is a separate name from a different root and is not related to it at all.

COMMON FORMS
  • Em
  • Emmy
  • Millie
  • Emmie
CLOSE SPELLINGS
  • Emilee
  • Emilie
  • Emmalee
OTHER-LANGUAGE FORMS
  • EmiliaIT/ES/PL/Scandinavian
  • ÉmilieFR
  • EmilijaBaltic/Slavic
PRACTICAL LIFE

How This Name Lives

AT SCHOOL & DAY TO DAY

Soft, familiar, and easy for young children to pronounce and write; one of the most universally recognized girls' names in English.

INTO ADULTHOOD

Long track record of professional/adult use given its dominance across an entire generational cohort; reads as timelessly appropriate in formal and informal settings alike.

Cultural Footprint

Two writers carry this name, and the connection between them is not just a shared first name. Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë are among the most consequential women in English-language literature, and at Dickinson’s funeral a single poem was read at her own explicit request: Brontë’s “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” One Emily chose the other’s words to be the last thing said over her. Beyond them the name has an unusually purposeful roster — the suffragette Emily Davison, who died after stepping in front of the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby; Emily Post, whose name became the word for good manners; and Emily Greene Balch, a Nobel Peace laureate.

TRACEABLE ORIGIN
  1. Emily Dickinsonpoet
  2. Emily Brontënovelist, Wuthering Heights
  3. Emily Postetiquette authority
  4. Emily Davisonsuffragette
  5. Emily Greene BalchNobel Peace Prize laureate
  6. Emily Bluntactress

Community Impressions

Emily is the name that defined an entire American generation of girls — the single most common name given to newborn girls in the U.S. for twelve straight years (1996-2007) — so it reads less as an exotic or dated choice and more as a name-shaped snapshot of the late 1990s and 2000s. Its double literary anchor (Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë, two of the most influential English-language writers of the 19th century) gives it a substantive, bookish resonance that a purely trend-driven name of the same era, like Madison, does not carry.

How this name is commonly received · not used in the score

More about Emily

HISTORICAL USE

Notable historical bearers include suffragette leaders Emmeline (Emily) Pankhurst-family figures and the suffragette martyr Emily Davison (1872-1913), who died after stepping in front of King George V's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby in protest for women's suffrage; Emily Post (1872-1960), the American etiquette authority whose name became synonymous with formal manners; and Emily Greene Balch (1867-1961), an American economist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

FORMALITY

Balanced — functions equally well as a formal given name and in casual/nickname use (Em, Emmy).

Names around it

EmiliaEmiliano
EDITORIAL SYNTHESIS

The Decision

Emily is soft, easy and genuinely well furnished — no pronunciation risk, a literary pedigree few names can match, and Em or Emmy underneath it. The problem is arithmetic. It was the most-given girls’ name in the United States for twelve consecutive years, from 1996 to 2007, which means it does not merely feel common: it identifies a birth decade almost as precisely as a date. That concentration is the whole point: those twelve years produced a single large cohort of Emilys, all born between 1996 and 2007. Whether that reads as classic or as her mother’s name is the whole decision, and the answer will differ by the time she is grown.

STRENGTH

A documented English pronunciation is on file. Uses standard characters that systems widely handle cleanly.

BEST FIT

Everyday Use is the strongest-scoring part of this name — no obvious nickname traps, rhymes, or initial issues detected.

FULL-NAME CHECK

See how it works with a surname.

Emily