Ada

German or Turkish

"noble, nobility, or island"

Ada Origin and Meaning

The name Ada is a girl's name of German origin meaning "noble, nobility, or island".

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.

Ada Popularity

• 181 US 2022
• 60 Nameberry 2024
• 211 Future 2028
• 44 England 2021
• 45 Scotland 2023
• 35 Ireland 2023
• 78 New Zealand 2023
• 309 Germany 2016
• 10 Norway 2023
• 67 Belgium 2022
• 96 Poland 2023
• 15 Turkey 2022