Humanverse

Ada vs Adanna

American parents have registered 107,183 Adas since 1880, against 696 Adannas. Ada is still ahead, with 1,401 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ada Adanna

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

Ada has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Ada had 214 and Adanna had 26.

Side by side

  Ada Adanna
Total US births 107,183696
Most in one year 1,95032
Babies in 2025 1,40127
Estimated living today 38,000690
Median age today 1714
Peak year 19182007
Best rank 123rd girls4,567th girls
Rank in 2025 219th4,878th
First recorded 18801978
Girls / boys 106,905 / 278696 / 0

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.

Which name is older

Half of the Adas alive today are over 17; half the Adannas are over 14. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Adanna
England and Wales 10,460244
France 1,63515
Scotland 7703

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 Adanna.