Emily

English form of Latin Aemilia, a gens name from aemulus ("rival, or those in the next valley").

Full definition of Emily

(plural Emilys)

1380s-1390s, Geoffrey Chaucer, I am thy mortal foe, and it am IThat so hot loveth Emily the bright,That I would die here present in her sight.
1830 Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Fourth Series: Cottage Names:People will please their fancies, and every lady has her favourite names. I myself have several, and they are mostly short and simple. - - - Emily, in which all womanly sweetness seems bound up - perhaps this is the effect of association of ideas - I have known so many charming Emilys
1980 Barbara Pym: A Few Green Leaves ISBN 0060805498 page 8:This may have accounted for Emma's Christian name, for it had seemed to Beatrix unfair to call her daughter Emily, a name associated with her grandmother's servants rather than the author of The Wuthering Heights, so Emma had been chosen, perhaps with the hope that some of the qualities possessed by the heroine of the novel might be perpetuated.
2010 Joanne Harris, blueeyedboy, Doubleday, ISBN 9780385609500, page 102:Emily. Em-il-y, three syllables, like a knock on the door of destiny. Such an odd, old-fashioned name, compared to those Kylies and Traceys and Jades â€” names that reeked of Impulse and grease and stood out in gaudy neon colours â€” whilst hers was that muted, dusky pink, like bubblegum, like roses â€”

Emily has been used as a vernacular form of the Germanic Amelia, up to the nineteenth century.

Used since the Middle Ages; popular in the 19th century and once again today.