Ida is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
Ida is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 1,220 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,219 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 124,374 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Ida. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
History tends to focus on the most famous and best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Ida is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, Ida has reached the SmartGenius top ranking #7 more than once, although the last time was a long time ago, way back in the 19th century in 1886. But even though the peak of its popularity was more than 100 years ago, the name Ida has been given to newborn girls every year since records began. Ida is of exceptional enduring popularity, that conveys the classic vibes of the19th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Ida was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The popularity of the name Ida peaked a very long time ago, but the name has nevertheless arrived in the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #999 in our statistics - perhaps a far cry from when your ancestors were children and Ida made it into the top ten more than once, but then again: traditional names often prove to be perennial favorites - so, maybe it's only a matter of time before Ida hits the top again.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Ida is one of them. However, Ida is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Mississippi seem to particularly fancy this name – the 5,540 women called Ida who live here are 0,288% of all female residents and push their name up to #76, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Mississippi.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter I is pretty rare as an initial letter for girls' names: only 1.7% of all common girls' names in the US begin with an I. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With only three letters, the name Ida 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 since 1.7% of all girls’ names begin with an I, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names that begin with an I, which are quite popular
If your name is Ida 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 Ida, you can simply say:
Igloo
Dinosaur
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Ida
Ida
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
I
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.
I
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. Ida sounds like this:
