Ada is a name with two different origins. In Turkish, the name stands for ‘island’. In Germanic languages, it is a short form of names derived from ‘adal’ for ‘noble’, including Adelaide.
Ada is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Ada isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Ada ranks 255. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 7 were named Ada. In the entire USA, approximately 69,950 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Ada. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
Ada is a name with two different origins. In Turkish, the name stands for ‘island’. In Germanic languages, it is a short form of names derived from ‘adal’ for ‘noble’, including Adelaide.
Ada is a... traditional Indian delicacy, consisting of rice parcels encased in a dough made of rice flour, with sweet fillings, and steamed in banana leaf.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Ada is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Ada for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Ada is therefore one of the 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Ada is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 girls' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: With #33 Ada has never been more popular than back in 1880.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Ada was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 1,647 babies were named Ada in the USA in 2022, ranking it #173 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1993, when it was only ranked #1,171 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 138 girls were named Ada.
Everyone knows her, everyone loves her and still she’s different from the mainstream: Ada occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Ada is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Ada is not one of those names that one encounters in every neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, is noticeable and special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 69,950 women and girls of all generations bear the name Ada – that is one in 2,204. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in Kentucky, where one in 873 women and girls is called Ada, while it is particularly rare in Hawaii, where you have to ask an average of 19,187 women for their name to get Ada as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter A is the most popular first letter for girls’ names. 11.8% of all common girls’ names in the US start with this letter. The second most common first letter in girls' names is S.
With only three letters, the name Ada is obviously very short. In fact, only 1.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly three letters. Just 0.2% of all first names are even shorter and only have two letters, while nearly 99% of all boys’ and girls’ names use more than three letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 11.8% of all girls' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs over three times as often as all other letters on average. And, by the way, of all the girls' names that begin with the letter A, the name Ashley is the most common.
If your name is Ada and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Ada, you can simply say:
Apple
Dinosaur
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Ada
Ada
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
D
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
A
D
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Ada sounds like this:
