Adaline

About Adaline

Adaline is an English form of Adelina, from a Germanic name built on the element adal, meaning “noble.” Pronounced AD-uh-line, it combines a familiar opening with a long final syllable. The spelling has both a literary namesake in Joyce scholar Adaline Glasheen and a cinematic one in the romantic fantasy The Age of Adaline.

Meaning and related names

The name belongs to the broad Germanic family that includes Adela, Adelina, and Adeline. Its central element, adal, is also found in many other old Germanic names. Adelina developed from this element, and Adaline is an English variant of that form.

Adaline and Adeline differ by a single written vowel, but the distinction matters in popularity records: the two spellings are counted separately. Adalyn and Adalynn are related modern English forms with a shorter final sound. Adelina retains an additional final vowel and is used in languages including Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Ada and Addie are established diminutives within this family. Adaline’s three-syllable pronunciation leaves the first syllable strongest and the final line sound clearly audible. It consequently has a different rhythm from both two-syllable Addie and four-syllable Adelina.

Adaline Glasheen and Joyce

Adaline Glasheen studied the dense network of characters and references in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Her Third Census of Finnegans Wake: An Index of the Characters and Their Roles was published by the University of California Press in 1977.

The word census in the title describes an inventory of the book’s people and their roles. Glasheen’s project identified figures who can be difficult to recognize in Joyce’s shifting language, including literary, historical, and mythical references. Her work gives Adaline a connection with the patient, detailed scholarship surrounding one of modern literature’s most challenging books.

A film title and a revival

The Age of Adaline was released in 2015, with Blake Lively in the title role. Its central character has remained young for almost eighty years. A new romantic relationship interrupts the guarded life she has built around that extraordinary condition.

The film places Adaline at the centre of a story about time, intimacy, and the cost of remaining unchanged while other lives move on. It also made this particular spelling conspicuous in a title, rather than leaving it as a name heard briefly in dialogue.

American popularity

Adaline was recorded for 38 girls in the United States in 2000 and 135 in 2010. The exact spelling rose much more sharply later: its highest annual birth count in the local SSA series was 1,882 in 2016, when it ranked #172.

In 2025, Adaline was given to 1,446 girls and ranked #208. The dates place its strongest numerical growth around the film’s release, while its Germanic roots and Glasheen’s earlier work show that the name’s history reaches further back.

How popular is Adaline?

In 2025, Adaline ranked #208 among girls in the United States, with 1,446 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 1,882 in 2016. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.