Adolf
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from Germanic *aþal- 'noble' + *wulf- 'wolf'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/aːdɔlf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Adolf is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 4.2K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 17K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 194 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈69,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Germanic *aþal- 'noble' + *wulf- 'wolf'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Adolf is read(measured from records)
Adolf is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German65%
from Germanic *aþal- 'noble' + *wulf- 'wolf'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
composed of the elements adal noble + wulf wolf. This was a common given name until the Second World War and was, for example, a dynastic name in the noble houses of Holstein and Nassau. Cogns.: Low Ger.: A(h)lf. It.: Ad(in)olfi. Dims.: It.: Adolfino. Patrs.: Low Ger.: A(h)lfs; Adolfsen. Swed.: Adolfsson.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
a male given name from Old High German, equivalent to English Adolph
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English14%
A male given name from the Germanic languages, variant of Adolph.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Czech11%
a male given name, equivalent to English Adolph
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Adolf 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #267 | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Adolf | 172 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | 2 | Adolf | 22 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 5,264 | 1 in 2K | 5.3K | — | 3 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Adolf | 30 |
| PL Poland | — | 2,226 | 1 in 17K | 2.4K | — | 2 |
| AT Austria | #378 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 86 | Adolf | 95 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,540 | 1 in 6.6K | 1.5K | Adolf | 25 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 459 | 1 in 4.6K | 459 | — | 8 |
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: MVČR — living population register 2017; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SURS — resident population given names; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results. 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)
Adolf is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Germanic: Adelwolf ‘noble wolf’, = Old English £thelwolf.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Adolf, King of the Romansb. 1255DEKing of Germany (1292-1298), count of Nassau (1276-1298)
- Gustav II Adolfb. 1594SESwedish king (regent 1611–1632) (1594–1632)
- Adolf Anderssenb. 1818PLGerman chess champion, after Paul Morphy (1858-1860), second unofficial world chess champion (1851-1858, 1860-1865, 1867-1871), chess publicist
- Emil Adolf von Behringb. 1854DEGerman physiologist who received the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901 for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin
- Gustaf V of Swedenb. 1858SEnot in their usual nameKing of Sweden from 1907 to 1950
- Gustaf VI Adolfb. 1882SEKing of Sweden (1950–1973); anthropologist, art historian, collector and archaeologist
- Adolf Hitlerb. 1889ATdictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, main instigator of World War II (1889–1945)
- Hans Adolf Krebsb. 1900DEGerman-British biochemist (1900-1981)
- Adolf Dasslerb. 1900DEGerman entrepreneur, founder of Adidas shoe company (1900–1978)
- Adolf Eichmannb. 1906DEGerman-Austrian SS officer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust (1906–1962)
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 87 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 5.3K | #253 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 2.6K | #280 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2.4K | #307 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 2.2K | #330 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.5K | #1,261 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 459 | #318 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 437 | #651 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 153 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 86 | #1,820 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 1 | #1,853 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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
- Is Adolf a male or female name?
- Adolf is a male 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.
- What does the name Adolf mean, and where does it come from?
- from Germanic *aþal- 'noble' + *wulf- 'wolf' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name Adolf?
- In the etymology graph, Adolfo, Adolph and Adolphus are forms of the same name in other languages; Ade and Alf are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Adolf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 69 thousand people named Adolf in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled adolf.
- How do you pronounce Adolf?
- A machine transcription gives /aːdɔlf/ (IPA) for German.
- How common is the name Adolf?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 5,264 people named Adolf, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Adolf compared with other names?
- In Germany, Adolf is the 267th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Adolf?
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/adolfThe 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, “Adolf” — the 267th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.