Emma

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Germanic name meaning 'universal'; popular in Ireland today

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

Emma 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 132(measured from records)
  • DKDenmark1 in 260
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 382

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 Emma 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 people, 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 132 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

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)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled 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)

Germanic hypocoristic from names with Ermin/Irmin; sense 'strength'

Sources 1

  • Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

How Emma is read(measured from records)

Emma is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • English57%

    Germanic name meaning 'universal'; popular in Ireland today.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • Spanish17%

    Germanic hypocoristic from names with Ermin/Irmin; sense 'strength'

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • French12%

    Short form of Germanic names in ermen- (“whole, universal”); feast day not given in excerpt.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

    Short form of Germanic names in Ermen-, from 'whole' or 'universal'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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)

Emma 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 Emma is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#335498,2211 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#1177,4901 in 13277KEmma182
DK Denmark#17622,5901 in 26023KEmma152
FI Finland#85918,2371 in 30625KEmma83
AM Armenia#59≈10,000 est.≈1 in 290103Էմմա59
SI Slovenia—6,331as Ema1 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); 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)

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

  • Spanish given name19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Mexico, United States, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Emmä, Ëmmä, Emmá, Emma', Émma

  • French given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Belgium

    Also written Émma, Emmà, Emmä, Emmå, Emmã

  • Russian given name81 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian

    Also written Эмма, Емма, Ema, Эма, Ема

  • Finnish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Sweden, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Ĕmmã

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Ėmma, Êmma, Ēmma, Èmma, Émma

  • Indonesian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, United States, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written 'Emma, Ęmmą, Emmã, Emmå, Émmã

85 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)

Emma is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, from a Germanic stem meaning 'universal, whole'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, from the old feminine name ending -a; Germanic origin uncertain in this passage

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 195 sources across 94 countries.

Official registers attesting Emma
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020497K#86
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024174K#5
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—77K#39
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202050K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—25K#99
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—23K#17
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—18K—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202513K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020786#86
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2025397#343

Reference works 9

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

In which country does Emma 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 it is most often spelled emma.
Where is Emma most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Emma is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 132 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
Is Emma a male or female name?
Emma 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.
Where does the name Emma come from?
Germanic hypocoristic from names with Ermin/Irmin; sense 'strength' Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
How common is the name Emma?
In the United States, the national register counted 498,221 people named Emma in 2020, about 1 in 668 residents.
How common is Emma compared with other names?
In the United States, Emma is the 335th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What does the name Emma mean?
In English, Germanic name meaning 'universal'; popular in Ireland today.
What are other forms of the name Emma?
In the etymology graph, Irma, Ema and Erma are forms of the same name in other languages; Emmy and Emmie are recorded short or pet forms.

What do you want to know about Emma?

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

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, “Emma” — the 335th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Emma parses inside a full name →