Humanverse

Aden vs Adena

American parents have registered 22,517 Adens since 1880, against 1,747 Adenas. Aden is still ahead, with 234 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Aden Adena

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 120 years in which either name was published, Aden for 74 years and Adena for 46 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

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

Side by side

  Aden Adena
Total US births 22,5171,747
Most in one year 1,43243
Babies in 2025 2346
Estimated living today 22,0001,500
Median age today 1641
Peak year 20061975
Best rank 244th boys2,023rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,008th13,208th
First recorded 18801902
Girls / boys 663 / 21,8541,747 / 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 Adenas alive today are over 41; half the Adens are over 16. That is 25 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 Aden Adena
France 1,19060
England and Wales 1,2027

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: Aden and Adena.