... Emma, though often classed with Amelia, Emily, etc., is probably an entirely different name.  It is so often thought to be the same name as Emily that it is treated of here, but it is most likely derived from the Icelandic Emm, meaning "a nurse":  Amme is the current word for nurse in Germany now...
    Emily is from the Latin, Amelia the Teutonic, and all three names, Amelia, Emily and Emma have been popular amongst the Royal families of Europe, though simple Emma is now often considered too plain for the daughters of the highly-placed.  Several minor Saints have borne the name, and Amerigo Vespucci is the great representative of its Spanish masculine form, which through him came to be the name of the vast continent of the Western Hemisphere...
    In England the name of Emma was known in very early days, "The Lady of England" at the close of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century being an Emma.  The daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy, she became the Queen of Ethelred the Unready in 1002.  In 1013 she was sent with her two sons to Normandy for safety, and upon the death of Ethelred married Canute soon after his accession to the English throne.  Harold I. banished her, but she returned to England when her son Edward the Confessor succeeded to the crown.  He, however, deprived his mother of her property in 1043, and nine years later she died at Winchester, where she was buried.  She is sometimes known by the name of Aelfgiva. (Girls' Christian Names, Swan, 1905)