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Adaline vs Adam

American parents have registered 582,453 Adams since 1880, against 18,766 Adalines. Adam is still ahead, with 3,511 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adaline against Adam, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adaline Adam

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

Adam has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Adaline had 1,587 and Adam had 3,487.

Side by side

  Adaline Adam
Total US births 18,766582,453
Most in one year 1,88224,081
Babies in 2025 1,4463,511
Estimated living today 17,000537,000
Median age today 637
Peak year 20161984
Best rank 172nd girls18th boys
Rank in 2025 208th101st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 18,766 / 02,075 / 580,378

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 Adams alive today are over 37; half the Adalines are over 6. That is 31 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

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 Adaline Adam
France 62085,465
England and Wales 81773,286
Ireland 3318,492
Scotland 3412,161
Belgium 9510,546
Northern Ireland 114,777
Switzerland 482,540

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: Adaline and Adam.