Emily Oberg, 29, the founder of the brand Sporty and Rich, said that Emily was always the nice girl in movies. “It’s not a villain name,” she said.
For the last four years, Ms. Oberg has been living in Los Angeles and Paris, where she said she gets “Emily in Paris” associations all the time. “I think it’s cute,” she said. “It’s a funny show.” (Netflix has said that Emily Cooper’s name “is supposed to be pronounced with a French accent so ‘Emily’ and ‘Paris’ rhyme”; the show’s creator, Darren Star, did not respond to requests for comment.)
What’s in a Name?
Maybe you fell in love with an Emily, and the name makes you swoon. Maybe an Emily broke your heart, and hearing the name stings. Or maybe you’re an Emilia who has been called Emily your entire life by mistake — now even more frequently thanks to autocorrect — and you’ve come to resent it a bit as a result.
Ask an Emily, though, and many will tell you they’ve never met an Emily they didn’t like, as no fewer than five interviewed for this article did. (Emily Blunt declined to comment; Ms. Ratajkowski and Emily Weiss, the founder of Glossier, did not respond to requests for comment.)
Emily Oster, 43, an economist and writer whose work often focuses on parenting, said she thinks of Emily as a name for people who are going to be friendly. “You’re not going to have a difficult phone call with an Emily,” said Ms. Oster, who lives in Providence, R.I. She added, “To be clear, I don’t think this particularly overlaps in my personality.”
Nice, of course, can sometimes be a substitute for another word — boring — which is how Emily Dawn Long, 32, a fashion designer in New York, felt about her name when she was younger. “Growing up, I was never like, I have a really rad name!” Ms. Long said. She first met Ms. Bode Aujla, her fellow fashion designer, at a vintage clothing show when someone called out, “Emily,” and both women emerged from separate dressing rooms.
