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Adonai vs Adonijah

American parents have registered 1,466 Adonais since 1880, against 509 Adonijahs. Adonai is still ahead, with 92 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Adonai Adonijah

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 36 years in which either name was published, Adonai for 30 years and Adonijah for 6 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Adonai Adonijah
Total US births 1,466509
Most in one year 10733
Babies in 2025 9213
Estimated living today 1,500500
Median age today 914
Peak year 20242014
Best rank 1,685th boys3,297th boys
Rank in 2025 1,942nd6,446th
First recorded 19901982
Girls / boys 243 / 1,22326 / 483

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 Adonijahs alive today are over 14; half the Adonais are over 9. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Adonai Adonijah
England and Wales 13415

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: Adonai and Adonijah.