Adah
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'ornament' or 'adornment'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈædɑ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Adah is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 197K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 1M
- SESweden1 in 1.3M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 173 (measured from records)
- 1 in 197K (inferred from the name graph)
1,691 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'ornament' or 'adornment'.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Adah counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,691 | 1 in 197K | 1.7K | Adah | 173 |
| BR Brazil | 136 | 1 in 1.6M | 136 | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | 49 | 1 in 1M | 49 | — | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | 9 | 1 in 1.9M | 9 | — | 7 |
| SE Sweden | 8 | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | — |
1,691 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Adah is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
As the mother of Jabal and Jubal, she is regarded as the matriarch of nomadic pastoralism and the musical arts within the biblical narrative of human civilization's development.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, The wife of Lamech
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ornament, adornment, or beauty
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, wife of Lamech; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Biblical: Authorized Version spelling of the name (meaning ‘adornment’ in Hebrew) borne by the wives of Lamech (Genesis 4: 19) and of Esau (Genesis 36: 2). See also ADA .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Adah Isaacs Menkenb. 1835USAmerican actress, dancer, painter, and poet (1835–1868)
- Adah Louise Sutton Saalfieldb. 1860USAmerican author
- Adah Belle Thomsb. 1870USAmerican nurse and activist (1870-1943)
- Adah Robinsonb. 1882USAmerican Artist, teacher and printmaker
- Adah Elizabeth Verderb. 1900USAmerican bacteriologist and science administrator (1900-1997)
- Adah Almutairib. 1976USAmerican academic
- Winfred Omwakweb. 1981KEnot in their usual nameMiss Earth 2002
- Adah Sharmab. 1992INIndian film actress
- Adah Toland JonesUSflutist
- Adah AkenjiCMCameroonian producer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 33 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #8,561 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 136 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 134 | #33,256 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 121 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 110 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 109 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2019 | 106 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 94 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 93 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2021 | 91 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2015 | 90 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2017 | 87 | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Adah mean, and where does it come from?
- A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'ornament' or 'adornment'. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- How do you pronounce Adah?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈædɑ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Adah a male or female name?
- Adah is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Adah?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,691 people named Adah in 2020, about 1 in 197 thousand residents.
- What are other forms of the name Adah?
- In the etymology graph, Ada is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Adah have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Adah, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled adah.
- Where is Adah most common?
- Adah is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 197 thousand people carrying it.
What do you want to know about Adah?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/adahThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Adah”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.