One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Girls' name · 116,472 recorded births

Ada

#219 in the US in 2025

Where Ada stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#219girls’ names · US 2025

Ada was the 219th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,401 births.

peak 1918 · 1,943188019532025

Its moment was 1918, when 1,943 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#219US rank, 2025 (girls)
1,401US births in 2025
#33its best US rank, in 1880
1918peak year — 1,943 births
106,905US births since 1880
2,051NZ births since 1900
7,516E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Ada's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Ada was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Ada in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0358717
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Ada in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 60% as a share of girls' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Ada in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Ada has been registered 2,051 times since 1900, peaking in 1903 with 79 births. It ranked #74 for girls in 2025 on 50 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0449897
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Ada in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Ada in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Ada was registered 7,516 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2020 with 1,140 births. It ranked #40 for girls in 2025 on 1,014 births.

20200.0216432
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Ada in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#33652
1890#511,074
1900#721,101
1910#94960
1920#1361,823
1930#1851,040
1940#246665
1950#369471
1960#514351
1970#668238
1980#909166
1990#1,024177
2000#1,053197
2010#538544
2020#1851,560

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Ada most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
Texas5,025
New York4,991
Pennsylvania4,489
North Carolina4,069
California3,734
Ohio3,710
Kentucky3,164
Georgia2,952
Virginia2,793
Tennessee2,746

Questions about Ada

How popular is the name Ada?

Ada ranked #219 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 1,401 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Ada most popular?

Ada peaked in 1918, when 1,943 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Ada rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Ada has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+60%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1918, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.