Adel
The boy's name Adel has been in the national records since 1888, with 3,002 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 4,707th. About 2,300 Adels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Adel boys named Adel
Girls and boys called Adel
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Adel crossed from girls to boys in 1983, and has stayed there for 38 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, and in 2025 it was 40%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 43 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 3,002
- Estimated living today
- 2,300
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2007
- Best rank
- 2,442nd
- Rank in 2025
- 4,707th
- First recorded
- 1888
- Girls / boys
- 1,494 / 1,508
How old the living Adels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,002 babies given the name since 1888, about 2,300 are alive — 77 in every hundred. Roughly 1,000 of them are children and 190 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 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
Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *aþalaz. The female name is a rare variant of Adele. The surname is borrowed from German Adel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Adels
- Adel Taarabt (born 1989)Moroccan footballer
- Adel Emam (born 1940)Egyptian actor
- Adel Chedli (born 1976)Tunisian and French association football player
- Adel al-Jubeir (born 1962)Saudi diplomat and minister of foreign affairs
- Adel Safar (born 1953)64th Prime Minister of the Syrian Arab Republic
- Adel Sellimi (born 1972)Tunisian association football player
- Adel Nefzi (born 1974)Tunisian association football player
- Adel Mechaal (born 1990)Spanish middle- and long-distance runner
People named Adel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Adel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Adel is most concentrated in New York (4.6×), Georgia (3.7×), California (3.2×), Florida (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2007
The most popular boys’ names the year Adel peaked:
Adel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Adel +1 spelling | 9,795 | 166th |
| England and Wales boys | Adel | 288 | 1,280th |
| Belgium boys | Adel | 265 | 619th |
| Switzerland boys | Adel | 133 | 527th |
| England and Wales girls | Adel | 129 | 2,502nd |
| Norway boys | Adel | 127 | 395th |
| Poland girls | Adel | 126 birth registrations | 193rd |
| France girls | Adel +1 spelling | 25 | 5,832nd |
| Ireland girls | Adel | 13 | 386th |
| Belgium girls | Adel | 11 | 1,247th |
| Scotland boys | Adel | 3 | 638th |
| Poland boys | Adel | 2 birth registrations | 663rd |
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.
Adel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Adel | 67 | 0.005% | 428th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Adel | 63 | 0.014% | 244th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Adel | 3 | 0.005% | 134th |
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, Adel is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.02% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Adel: rank by region
In 2024, Adel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Adel | 487 | 5 |
In 2025, Adel was given 2 times or more in 9 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Adel | 138 | 6 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Adel | 143 | 3 |
| Lubuskie | Adel | 139 | 2 |
| Łódzkie | Adel | 151 | 3 |
| Mazowieckie | Adel | 201 | 6 |
| Pomorskie | Adel | 209 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Adel | 174 | 5 |
| Wielkopolskie | Adel | 248 | 2 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Adel | 148 | 3 |
In 2022, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Adel appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (273rd).
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.
Adel by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 546th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Adel 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Adel | 72 | 121 |
| Finland girls | Adel | 19 | 53 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – 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 Adel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,099 men called Adel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Adel | 11 | 0.251 | 449 |
| Ceuta | Adel | 8 | 0.190 | 483 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Adel | 98 | 0.097 | 800 |
| Almería | Adel | 37 | 0.094 | 773 |
| Lleida | Adel | 21 | 0.089 | 861 |
| Girona | Adel | 37 | 0.089 | 822 |
Listed in 42 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 10 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
Adel against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.