Humanverse

Ada vs Adan

American parents have registered 107,183 Adas since 1880, against 31,624 Adans. Ada is still ahead, with 1,401 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ada against Adan, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ada Adan

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Ada for 110 years and Adan for 36 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Ada Adan
Total US births 107,18331,624
Most in one year 1,9501,164
Babies in 2025 1,401631
Estimated living today 38,00030,000
Median age today 1718
Peak year 19182005
Best rank 123rd girls287th boys
Rank in 2025 219th482nd
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 106,905 / 278146 / 31,478

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ada Adan
England and Wales 10,460466
France 1,6351,420
Belgium 1,23725
Scotland 7709
Switzerland 45555

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Ada and Adan.