Obadiah
Obadiah is a boy's name that peaked in 2024, when it was the 1,413th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,621st. About 2,300 Obadiahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 11.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Obadiah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,521
- Estimated living today
- 2,300
- Median age today
- 11
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 1,413th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,621st
- First recorded
- 1914
How old the living Obadiahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,521 babies given the name since 1914, about 2,300 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 1,600 of them are children and 50 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 Hebrew
From Hebrew עובדיה (“servant of Yahweh”); comparable to Arabic عبد اللّٰه (“servant of God”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Obadiahs
- Obadiah (586 BC–500 BC)biblical prophet associated with the Book of Obadiah
- John Obadiah Westwood (1805–1893)English entomologist and archaeologist
- Obadiah ben Abraham (1445–1500)Italian rabbi (c.1450–1509)
People named Obadiah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Obadiah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Obadiah is most concentrated in Washington (3.8×), Arizona (2.6×), California (2.6×), Texas (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular boys’ names the year Obadiah peaked:
Obadiah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Obadiah | 91 | 2,269th |
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.
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.