Adeline
The story
Adeline is a diminutive built on the Germanic adal, noble, the same element inside Adelaide, Adele and Alice. French softened it and English took it from French. Its curve is one of the cleanest revivals in our records, close to a textbook U. Adeline ran to about 9,900 babies in the 1920s, fell for fifty years to a low near 350 in the 1970s, and then came back to more than 23,000 in the 2010s. A name that disappears for two generations and returns at more than double its old height is doing something specific: it is old enough to sound inherited and unused enough to feel found. Addie and Ada both wait inside it, and our own short-form records confirm both, so a family can choose the long version and still have somewhere soft to land.
Adeline around the world
One shared root links 21 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: a Germanic family built on adal "noble": Adalheidis "of noble kind" wore down through Old French Aalis into Alice and a crowd of descendants
The constellation
14 more branches of this family
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Adeline peaked in the 2020s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
1,677 people · the #5,791 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 125,000 · median age 36
Among people named Adeline living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 20 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Adeline
Most people given the name Adeline in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Adeline deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Adeline truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Adeline fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Names like Adeline · Nicknames for Adeline · Middle names for Adeline · Romantic names
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