Humanverse

Adolf vs Adonai

American parents have registered 1,466 Adonais since 1880, against 1,394 Adolfs. Adonai is still ahead, with 92 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Adolf against Adonai, 1880 to 2025 0 30 60 90 120 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Adolf Adonai

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 117 years in which either name was published, Adolf for 86 years and Adonai for 31 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Adolf Adonai
Total US births 1,3941,466
Most in one year 56107
Babies in 2025 under 592
Estimated living today 2401,500
Median age today 659
Peak year 19182024
Best rank 889th boys1,685th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,942nd
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 0 / 1,394243 / 1,223

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 Adolfs alive today are over 65; half the Adonais are over 9. That is 56 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 Adolf Adonai
France 45270 Adonaï

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: Adolf and Adonai.