Ema

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Portuguese: rhea bird

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ema/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Ema is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Sweden it is the 11th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 132as Emma(measured from records)
  • DKDenmark1 in 260as Emma
  • AMArmenia≈1 in 290as Էմմա

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ema itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

498,221 named Emma, 2020

#503 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
579 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 332 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

EmmaLatin(measured from records)
ԷմմաArmenian(measured from records)
ემაGeorgian(measured from records)
ΕμμαGreek(measured from records)
엠마Hangul(measured from records)

Locally spelled Emma in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines and 3 more and Էմմա in AM Armenia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

rhea bird

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

How Ema is read(measured from records)

Ema is one spelling over 6 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish54%

    Variante gráfica de Emma

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • Portuguese10%

    rhea bird

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Hindi8.3%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ema in Hindi.

  • English6.9%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ema in English.

  • Indonesian5.7%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ema in Indonesian.

  • Croatian5.3%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ema in Croatian.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ema counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Ema is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#335498,221as Emma1 in 668497KEmma579
GB United Kingdom#63≈170,000 est.≈1 in 3823Emma411
PH Philippines#262≈120,000 est.≈1 in 917—Emma131
FR France—≈95,000 est.≈1 in 715174K—18
SE Sweden#1177,490as Emma1 in 13277KEmma182
CZ Czechia—24,0721 in 44524K—4
DK Denmark#17622,590as Emma1 in 26023KEmma152
FI Finland#85918,237as Emma1 in 30625KEmma83
AM Armenia#59≈10,000 est.≈1 in 290103Էմմա59
SI Slovenia—6,3311 in 3326.4K—15

498,221 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); MVČR — living population register 2017; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia — Most Frequent Newborn Given Names by Sex, Armenian script, 2008-2020 + 2023; SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ema is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian given name81 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian

    Also written Эмма, Емма, Emma, Эма, Ема

  • English given name47 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Nigeria

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Emae, E-Mae, Emaé, Ema', E'Ma

  • French given name28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Cameroon

    Also written Éma, E'Ma, Émà, Ėmã, Ëma

  • Indonesian given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Ema, Ěmă, Éma, Èma, Emã

  • Hungarian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Hungary, Romania, United States

    Also written Émã, Émå, Émà, Éma, Émä

  • Khmer given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Kyrgyzstan

    Also written Ęmā, Ëmå

60 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Ema is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Amada

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • Good.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In lua, to cut incision in palm tree so that the sap can flow out, tap, get wine.

    as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language

  • In pi, first-person plural present/imperative active of eti (“to come”)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18501900195020002050Emma Morano, b. 1899Juliana of the Netherlands, b. 1909Emma Thompson, b. 1959Emma Thomas, b. 1971Emma Watson, b. 1990Emma Roberts, b. 1991Emma Corrin, b. 1995Emma Mackey, b. 1996Emma Myers, b. 2002Emma Raducanu, b. 2002

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

InformalHola Ema,Hi Ema, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 97 sources across 48 countries.

Official registers attesting Ema
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—24K#131
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—12K#148
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—6.4K#71
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20256.3K#31
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20245.8K#574
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20205.5K#3,657
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—435#3,056
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020324—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—237#922
SI SloveniaSURS — Najpogostejša imena in priimki (population register)2024165—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025164—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—130#2,420

Reference works 6

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Ema mean, and where does it come from?
rhea bird Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Ema?
A machine transcription gives /ema/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Ema have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 498 thousand people named Emma, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Ema most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ema is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 332 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ema?
In Czechia, the national register counted 24,072 people named Ema, about 1 in 445 residents.
How common is Ema compared with other names?
In the United States, Ema is the 335th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
Is Ema a male or female name?
Ema is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Ema?
In the etymology graph, Emma, Irma and Erma are forms of the same name in other languages.

What do you want to know about Ema?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ema

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Ema” — the 335th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ema parses inside a full name →