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Adele vs Aden

American parents have registered 42,373 Adeles since 1880, against 22,517 Adens. Adele is still ahead, with 362 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Adele 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, Adele for 122 years and Aden for 24 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Adele Aden
Total US births 42,37322,517
Most in one year 1,0361,432
Babies in 2025 362234
Estimated living today 18,00022,000
Median age today 4616
Peak year 19182006
Best rank 191st girls244th boys
Rank in 2025 751st1,008th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 42,362 / 11663 / 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 Adeles alive today are over 46; half the Adens are over 16. That is 30 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 Adele Aden
France 53,495 Adèle1,190
England and Wales 2,4031,202
Belgium 1,685 Adèle67
Scotland 1,49289
Switzerland 726 Adèle44
Ireland 53125
Poland 805
Northern Ireland 536

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: Adele and Aden.