Humanverse

Adeline vs Adell

American parents have registered 80,838 Adelines since 1880, against 7,263 Adells. Adeline is still ahead, with 3,864 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adeline against Adell, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adeline Adell

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

Adeline 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 1953, when Adeline had 92 and Adell had 88.

Side by side

  Adeline Adell
Total US births 80,8387,263
Most in one year 4,126229
Babies in 2025 3,8648
Estimated living today 53,0001,900
Median age today 871
Peak year 20161921
Best rank 63rd girls500th girls
Rank in 2025 59th10,917th
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 80,812 / 266,214 / 1,049

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 Adells alive today are over 71; half the Adelines are over 8. That is 63 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 Adeline Adell
England and Wales 1,6543

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: Adeline and Adell.