Adah vs Adaline
American parents have registered 18,766 Adalines since 1880, against 4,123 Adahs. Adaline is still ahead, with 1,446 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Adah Adaline
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 143 years in which either name was published, Adaline for 95 years and Adah for 48 years. The lead changed hands 35 times.
- 1880–1900 Adah ahead
- 1907–1942 Adaline ahead, apart from 3 short spells
- 1943–1945 Adah ahead
- 1955–1968 Adaline ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1969–1978 Adah ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1986–2025 Adaline ahead, apart from one short spell
24 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Adah | Adaline | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 4,123 | 18,766 |
| Most in one year | 121 | 1,882 |
| Babies in 2025 | 110 | 1,446 |
| Estimated living today | 2,100 | 17,000 |
| Median age today | 11 | 6 |
| Peak year | 2020 | 2016 |
| Best rank | 1,687th girls | 172nd girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 1,818th | 208th |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 4,123 / 0 | 18,766 / 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 Adahs alive today are over 11; half the Adalines are over 6. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Adah North Carolina (3.8×), Georgia (2.6×), Texas (2.4×)
- Adaline Nevada (2.7×), Utah (2.4×), Idaho (2.3×)
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 | Adah | Adaline |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 152 | 817 |
| France | 20 | 620 |
| Ireland | 47 | 33 |
| Switzerland | 6 | 48 |
| Scotland | 6 | 34 |
| Northern Ireland | 10 | 11 |
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: Adah and Adaline.