Adolf
Adolf reached its high-water mark in 1918 at number 889, and has been recorded 1,394 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 1990. About 240 Adolfs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Adolf
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,394
- Estimated living today
- 240
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 889th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Adolfs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,394 babies given the name since 1880, about 240 are alive — 17 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 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
From Old High German adal (“noble”) + wulf (“wolf”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Adolfs
- Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, main instigator of World War II
- Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962)German-Austrian SS officer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust
- Adolf von Baeyer (1835–1917)German chemist
- Adolf Butenandt (1903–1995)German biochemist
- Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (1882–1973)King of Sweden (1950–1973); anthropologist, art historian, collector and archaeologist
- Adolf Windaus (1876–1959)German chemist
- Adolf Loos (1870–1933)Austrian and Czech architect and art collector
- Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832–1901)Finland Swedish baron, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer
People named Adolf with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Adolf is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Adolf is most concentrated in New York (6.8×), Texas (2.8×), Illinois (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular boys’ names the year Adolf peaked:
Adolf elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Adolf | 45 | 776th |
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.
Adolf 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Adolf | 1,495 | 3,657 |
| Finland boys | Adolf | 19 | 818 |
| the Netherlands girls | Adolf | — | 42 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Related names
Adolf 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.