Presented by

The first name 
Obadiah

Obadiah is a male first name.

Obadiah is a well-known but special name!

Obadiah is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth boy, and therefore ranks at 1549 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,548 boys names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Obadiah.

You won't believe all there is 
to discover about the name
 
Obadiah

Obadiah -
an underrated contemporary

While Obadiah isn't one of the most popular names of all time, it seems to be attracting more and more parents in the 21st century. In 2022 the name Obadiah reached its highest popularity with #1,357 in our ranking of all male first names. Because it's so exquisite, moms and dads haven't always thought of naming their son Obadiah (or at least not more than four in some years as there must be at least five boys named Obadiah to appear in the official statistics). Using these criteria, the first name Obadiah has been given to babies in 83 of the 143 years since records began, making boys with this name still very special today.

In years where the graph has no value, the name Obadiah was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.

Obadiah -
at home in half of America

The odds that a man or boy named Obadiah lives in your home state are about the same as betting on heads or tails in a coin toss. This boy’s name is quite popular, but not equally so throughout the entire USA. You can meet boys and men with the name Obadiah in 21 states – which is obviously nearly every second of all 50 states in the USA, for example in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California or Colorado. In relation to the number of residents, the most men and boys with the first name Obadiah live in Washington – here, one in 72,263 bears this name. In comparison, if we look at all living men and boys in the whole country, only one in 339,967 will turn around if you call his first name Obadiah.

Obadiah has 7 letters 
and begins with an O

Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter O is pretty rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an O. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.

With seven letters, the name Obadiah has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. 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 1.8% of all boys’ names begin with an O, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names beginning with an O, which are quite popular

With hands, flags and sounds 
How to say Obadiah

If your name is Obadiah 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...

This is how you spell the name Obadiah

So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Obadiah, you can simply say:

Orange

Butterfly

Apple

Dinosaur

Igloo

Apple

Hat

This is how the name Obadiah is spelled in the NATO phonetic alphabet

The NATO alphabet often helps people spell words on the phone or radio when there are communication problems.

How do you write Obadiah in Braille?

Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.

Obadiah

Obadiah

You want to tell a deaf person that your name is Obadiah

Just use American Sign Language!

The name Obadiah is particularly colorful in the Semaphore flag signaling system!

These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.

O
B
A
D
I
A
H

Have you ever waved the name Obadiah

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.

O
B
A
D
I
A
H

Beeping like crazy...

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. Obadiah sounds like this: