Ida
The girl's name Ida has been in the national records since 1880, with 188,695 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,120th. About 35,000 Idas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 71.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ida boys named Ida
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 188,695
- Estimated living today
- 35,000
- Median age today
- 71
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 57th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,120th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 187,929 / 766
How old the living Idas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 188,695 babies given the name since 1880, about 35,000 are alive — 19 in every hundred. Roughly 2,900 of them are children and 22,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1954 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
Short form of obsolete names beginning with Germanic īd "work", used for both sexes in medieval England. It was revived in the 19th century, partly mistaken for a Greek name, for the Mount Ida of classical mythology.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Idas
- Ida Lupino (1918–1995)British actress
- Ida B. Wells (1862–1931)American journalist and civil rights activist
- Ida Noddack (1896–1978)German chemist
- Ida Saxton McKinley (1847–1907)First Lady of the United States from 1897 to 1901
- Ida Tarbell (1857–1944)American journalist
- Ida Laura Pfeiffer (1797–1858)Austrian explorer and writer, editor
- Ida Kamińska (1899–1980)Polish actress
- Ida Vitale (born 1923)Uruguayan writer
People named Ida with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ida is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ida is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.5×), South Carolina (2.6×), Alabama (2.4×), Arkansas (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Ida peaked:
Ida elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway girls | Ida | 20,357 | 1st |
| Denmark girls | Ida | 17,794 | 6th |
| France girls | Ida | 14,760 | 89th |
| Sweden girls | Ida | 13,662 | 3rd |
| Poland girls | Ida | 4,894 birth registrations | 72nd |
| England and Wales girls | Ida | 2,259 | 257th |
| Italy girls | Ida | 2,153 | — |
| Austria girls | Ida | 1,388 | 33rd |
| Switzerland girls | Ida | 985 | 88th |
| Belgium girls | Ida | 786 | 97th |
| Ireland girls | Ida | 99 | 494th |
| Scotland girls | Ida | 80 | 341st |
| France boys | Ida | 65 | 1,635th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ida | 64 | 178th |
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.
Ida: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ida | 928 | 0.075% | 69th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ida | 45 | 0.010% | 398th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Ida | 10 | 0.015% | 152nd |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Ida | 2 | 0.054% | 9th |
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, Ida is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.19% of children were given it – 71 of them.
Ida: rank by region
In 2025, Ida was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ida | 64 | 72 |
| Wallonia | Ida | 327 | 8 |
| Brussels | Ida | 132 | 8 |
In 2024, Ida was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano | Ida | 8 | 24 |
In 2025, Ida was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Ida | 49 | 48 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Ida | 74 | 13 |
| Lubelskie | Ida | 90 | 9 |
| Lubuskie | Ida | 81 | 6 |
| Łódzkie | Ida | 71 | 18 |
| Małopolskie | Ida | 81 | 30 |
| Mazowieckie | Ida | 77 | 49 |
| Opolskie | Ida | 81 | 5 |
| Podkarpackie | Ida | 83 | 10 |
| Podlaskie | Ida | 73 | 9 |
| Pomorskie | Ida | 69 | 26 |
| Śląskie | Ida | 113 | 12 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Ida | 67 | 7 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Ida | 68 | 10 |
| Wielkopolskie | Ida | 69 | 30 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Ida | 69 | 14 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ida appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (53rd), Province of Limburg (69th), Province of West Flanders (71st), Province of Flemish Brabant (73rd), Province of Antwerp (78th), Brussels-Capital Region (132nd) and Province of Liège (157th).
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.
Ida by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 779 | 18th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ida 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Ida | 6,990 | 15,276 |
| Finland girls | Ida | 7,167 | 14,714 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ida | — | 684 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Ida lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 337 women called Ida 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ourense | Ida | 8 | 0.050 | 1,037 |
| Lugo | Ida | 7 | 0.042 | 1,200 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Ida | 22 | 0.040 | 1,850 |
| Girona | Ida | 16 | 0.039 | 1,527 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Ida | 10 | 0.032 | 1,644 |
| León | Ida | 5 | 0.022 | 1,822 |
Listed in 21 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 31 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
Ida 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.