Adele
Adele is a girl's name that peaked in 1918, when it was the 191st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 751st. About 18,000 Adeles are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Adele boys named Adele
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 42,373
- Estimated living today
- 18,000
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 191st
- Rank in 2025
- 751st
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 42,362 / 11
How old the living Adeles are
born that year still alive today
Of the 42,373 babies given the name since 1880, about 18,000 are alive — 42 in every hundred. Roughly 6,500 of them are children and 6,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
Borrowed from French Adèle, equivalent of Adela, from a Germanic root meaning “noble”. Compare athel, German edel, Old English æþele.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Adeles
- Adele (born 1988)English singer-songwriter
- Adèle Exarchopoulos (born 1993)French actress
- Adèle of Champagne (1140–1206)Queen of the Franks from 1160 to 1180
- Adèle Haenel (born 1989)French actress
- Adele Goldberg (born 1945)American computer scientist
- Adele Jergens (1917–2002)American actress
- Adele Goldstine (1920–1964)American computer programmer
- Adele Mara (1923–2010)American actress
People named Adele with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Adele is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Adele is most concentrated in New York (3.4×), New Jersey (3.0×), Connecticut (2.0×), Massachusetts (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Adele peaked:
Adele elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Adèle +2 spellings | 53,430 | 9th |
| Italy girls | Adele | 21,623 | — |
| England and Wales girls | Adele | 2,403 | 246th |
| Belgium girls | Adèle +1 spelling | 1,685 | 62nd |
| Scotland girls | Adele | 1,492 | 99th |
| Norway girls | Adele | 1,179 | 84th |
| Switzerland girls | Adèle +1 spelling | 726 | 192nd |
| Ireland girls | Adele | 531 | 218th |
| Sweden girls | Adele | 157 | 84th |
| Poland girls | Adele | 80 birth registrations | 292nd |
| France boys | Adèle | 65 | 2,522nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Adele | 53 | 230th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Adele: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Adele | 110 | 0.009% | 476th |
| German girls | Switzerland | Adèle | 48 | 0.004% | 730th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Adèle | 433 | 0.100% | 39th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Adele | 49 | 0.011% | 293rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Adele | 85 | 0.130% | 27th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Adèle | 1 | 0.002% | 169th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Adele is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.18% of children were given it – 125 of them.
Adele: rank by region
In 2025, Adele was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Adèle | 836 | 5 |
| Wallonia | Adèle | 16 | 104 |
| Brussels | Adèle | 47 | 17 |
In 2024, Adele was among the 10 most common names in 4 regions of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Adele | 7 | 2 |
| Toscana | Adele | 10 | 127 |
| Umbria | Adele | 9 | 31 |
| Sardegna | Adele | 7 | 60 |
In 2025, Adele was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Adele | 234 | 2 |
| Małopolskie | Adele | 232 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Adele | 201 | 6 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Adele appears in the lists for Province of Namur (9th), Province of Luxembourg (11th), Province of Walloon Brabant (15th), Province of Hainaut (16th), Province of Liège (32nd) and Brussels-Capital Region (47th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Adele by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 27 | 345th |
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 551st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Adele among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Adele +3 spellings | 1,212 | 5,173 |
Among girls in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 5,173 who carry it, 1,212 go by it.
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Adele lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 316 women called Adele were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Adele | 24 | 0.043 | 1,727 |
| Balears, Illes | Adele | 20 | 0.032 | 1,778 |
| Bizkaia | Adele | 17 | 0.028 | 1,715 |
| Barcelona | Adele | 68 | 0.022 | 2,055 |
| Gipuzkoa | Adele | 8 | 0.021 | 1,994 |
| Málaga | Adele | 18 | 0.020 | 2,209 |
Listed in 12 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 40 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Adele against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.