Humanverse

Adeline vs Aden

American parents have registered 80,838 Adelines since 1880, against 22,517 Adens. Adeline is still ahead, with 3,864 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adeline against Aden, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adeline 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, Adeline for 135 years and Aden for 11 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Adeline Aden
Total US births 80,83822,517
Most in one year 4,1261,432
Babies in 2025 3,864234
Estimated living today 53,00022,000
Median age today 816
Peak year 20162006
Best rank 63rd girls244th boys
Rank in 2025 59th1,008th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 80,812 / 26663 / 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 Adelines are over 8. That is 8 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 Adeline Aden
France 54,5801,190
England and Wales 1,6541,202
Belgium 1,07367
Ireland 17425
Switzerland 15144
Scotland 9089
Northern Ireland 276
Poland 105

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: Adeline and Aden.