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Adelle vs Aden

American parents have registered 22,517 Adens since 1880, against 5,492 Adelles. Aden is still ahead, with 234 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adelle against Aden, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adelle Aden

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 141 years in which either name was published, Adelle for 96 years and Aden for 45 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Adelle Aden
Total US births 5,49222,517
Most in one year 1791,432
Babies in 2025 28234
Estimated living today 3,20022,000
Median age today 2016
Peak year 20112006
Best rank 1,311th girls244th boys
Rank in 2025 4,758th1,008th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 5,492 / 0663 / 21,854

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 Adelles alive today are over 20; half the Adens are over 16. That is 4 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 Adelle Aden
England and Wales 2551,202
France 1351,190
Scotland 18889
Ireland 2425
Poland 25

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: Adelle and Aden.