Ada
Top 1000
About Ada
Ada is one of the classic baby names for girls that is suddenly super stylish again. A favorite at the end of the nineteenth century, Ada is an alternative to the over-popular Ava. Ada is also part of the trend toward simple, old-fashioned names beginning with a vowel, like Ivy and Ella.
Ada is derived from the German name Adelaide, which came from the ancient name Adalheidis. The root, adal, is a Germanic word meaning "noble." Ada can also be considered a variation of the biblical name Adah, pronounced AH-da, one of the first girls’ names mentioned in the Book of Genesis.
A worthy namesake is Ada Lovelace, mathematician daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who worked with Charles Babbage on the forerunners to the calculator and the computer. In his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron addresses her as "Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart."
Ada has a number of fictional references as well, appearing in Dickens's Bleak House and Nabokov's 1969 novel Ada; additional characters with the name were portrayed by Holly Hunter in The Piano and Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain.
Ada returned to the Top 1000 in 2004, after being off since 1992; by contrast, Ada was a Top 100 name in the 1880s.
The Turkish name Ada means "island" and is unrelated — though it makes an excellent option for parents looking for a name spanning two cultures.
Pronounced AY-duh.
As of October 2026, Ada ranked #219 in US births in 2025 SSA, peaked at #33 in 1880, Nameberry popularity #79.
Editor: Pamela Redmond
Sources: US popularity data is from the Social Security Administration. Meanings and origins are from Nameberry's name references.
Popularity & trends
Data table
| Year | US rank | Births | Per million |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | #374 | 871 | 487.6 |
| 2015 | #356 | 921 | 515.9 |
| 2016 | #345 | 968 | 546.3 |
| 2017 | #320 | 1,019 | 590.2 |
| 2018 | #251 | 1,302 | 765.4 |
| 2019 | #208 | 1,467 | 874.1 |
| 2020 | #185 | 1,560 | 965 |
| 2021 | #180 | 1,648 | 1,004.4 |
| 2022 | #181 | 1,656 | 1,009.7 |
| 2023 | #178 | 1,651 | 1,028.9 |
| 2024 | #193 | 1,563 | 964.7 |
| 2025 | #219 | 1,401 | 871.7 |
World rankings
Similar names
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Ada on lists
Famous Adas
- Ada Rehan
American actress
- Ada Adini
stage name of Adele Chapman, American opera singer
- Ada Scott Brown
American blues singer
- Ada Louise Comstock
American women's education pioneer
- Ada Louise Huxtable
American architectural critic
- (Augusta) Ada (Byron) King
Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron; pioneer of computer programming
- Ada Maris
American actress
- Ada Negri
Italian poet
- Ada Nicodemou
Australian actress
- Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith
American singer
- Ada Yonath
Israeli crystallographer & winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ada Oikari
Finnish rhythmic gymnast
- Ada Vox
stage name of Adam Saunders, American singer and drag queen
- Ada Benzine (b. 2017)
daughter of American vlogger Craig Benzine and wife Chyna Pate
- Ada James Akins (b. 2018)
daughter of Thomas Rhett (Akins)
Ada in pop culture
- Ada Monroe
character in book/film "Cold Mountain"
- Ada Wong
character in the Resident Evil video games
- Ada McGrath
main character in the 1993 film The Piano
- Ada Harris
main character in book/film "Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris"
- Ada Jaggs
character in Mary Downing Hahn's "All The Lovely Bad Ones"
- Ada Clare
character in "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens
- Adelaida "Ada" Veen
main character in Vladimir Nabokov's "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"
- Ada Gillis
main character in 1961 film "Ada," based on "Ada Dallas" by Wirt Williams
- Ada Fife
beloved of Reuben Light (then sacrificed by him to his God, the dynamo) in the Eugene O'Neill play The Dynamo (1929)
- Ada Shelby
character on TV's "Peaky Blinders"
- Ada Keith
character in the Mildred Keith series
- Ada Shufflebotham or Sidebottom
character played by British actor Roy Barraclough
- Ada
character in the video game Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
- Ada
an android in the comic book series Alex + Ada
- Ada Clover
character in the BlazBlue video game series
- Ada
robot companion in the game Fallout 4 Automatron DLC.
- Ada Thorne
character on British TV series "Peaky Blinders"
- Ada Versaillius
character in anime "Pandora Hearts"
- Ada Smith
main character in book "The War That Saved My Life"
- "Ada"
song by The National