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Adelaide vs Aden

American parents have registered 35,007 Adelaides since 1880, against 22,517 Adens. Adelaide is still ahead, with 1,062 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adelaide against Aden, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adelaide Aden

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 146 years in which either name was published, Adelaide for 126 years and Aden for 20 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Adelaide Aden
Total US births 35,00722,517
Most in one year 1,2401,432
Babies in 2025 1,062234
Estimated living today 22,00022,000
Median age today 916
Peak year 20162006
Best rank 255th girls244th boys
Rank in 2025 289th1,008th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 35,007 / 0663 / 21,854

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 Adens alive today are over 16; half the Adelaides are over 9. That is 7 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 Adelaide Aden
France 13,0251,190
England and Wales 1,6331,202
Belgium 176 Adélaïde67
Scotland 3489
Switzerland 39 Adélaïde44
Ireland 3125
Northern Ireland 66
Poland 25

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: Adelaide and Aden.