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Ada

German or Turkish
"noble, nobility, or island"
Clare Green
By Clare Green
Updated Fri Apr 04 2025

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.

# 177 in the US

Ada Rank in US Top 1000

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# 67 on Nameberry

Ada Rank in Nameberry Top 1000

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Popularity of the name Ada

20 Names Similar to Ada

These 20 names were selected by our users that were looking for other names like Ada.

Famous People Named Ada

  • 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)

The name 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