Ada

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Ada boys named Ada

By the numbers

Total US births

107,183

Estimated living today

38,000

Median age today

17

Peak year

1918

Best rank

123rd

Rank in 2025

219th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

106,905 / 278

How old the living Adas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 107,183 babies given the name since 1880, about 38,000 are alive — 36 in every hundred. Roughly 19,000 of them are children and 9,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2008 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Germanic languages

Short form of Germanic names beginning with adal (“noble”), such as Adelaide. Also Latinized form of Hebrew Adah. The programming language takes its name from Ada Lovelace.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Adas

• Ada Lovelace (1815–1852)English mathematician
• Ada Yonath (born 1939)Israeli chemist
• Ada Negri (1870–1945)Italian poet, writer, and teacher
• Ada Hegerberg (born 1995)Norwegian footballer
• Ada Colau (born 1974)Spanish activist and politician
• Ada of Caria (400 BC–325 BC)4th-century BC Satrap and Queen of Caria
• Ada Rohovtseva (born 1937)Soviet and Ukrainian actress
• Ada, Countess of Holland (1188–1223)Countess regnant of Holland from 1203 to 1207

People named Ada with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Ada is most common

• TX5,025
• NY4,991
• PA4,489
• NC4,069
• CA3,734
• OH3,710
• KY3,164
• GA2,952
• VA2,793
• TN2,746

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ada is most concentrated in Kentucky (2.4×), Mississippi (2.3×), West Virginia (2.2×), Alabama (2.0×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Ada peaked:

• Mary
• Helen
• Dorothy
• Margaret
• Ruth
• Mildred

All the names of 1918

Ada elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Ada: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Ada is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.05% of children were given it – 161 of them.

Ada: rank by region

In 2025, Ada was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, Ada was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ada appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (30th), Province of West Flanders (30th), Province of Flemish Brabant (34th), Province of Antwerp (39th), Province of Limburg (41st), Province of Hainaut (117th) and Brussels-Capital Region (159th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Ada by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Ada among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Ada lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 4,532 women called Ada were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Adam
• Adalynn
• Adan
• Adalyn
• Adaline
• Adalee
• Adalberto
• Adah
• Adair
• Adamaris
• Adara
• Adalia

Ada against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Ada vs Adam
• Ada vs Adalynn
• Ada vs Adan
• Ada vs Adalyn
• Ada vs Adaline
• Ada vs Adalee

Compare Ada with a name of your own