Adonis
Masculine · “lord”
Adonis is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 21,593 boys against 101 girls since 1880.
Adonis has been said aloud for well over two thousand years — first in the mourning songs of the eastern Mediterranean, then in Greek poetry, then in English, where Shakespeare gave it a whole poem of its own. The name travels lightly for its age: three syllables, a soft landing, and a familiar spelling that most people read correctly on sight.
How old is the name Adonis?
Adonis first appears in US birth records in 1918 — 107 years ago. The typical Adonis is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 21,500 people named Adonis are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Adonis most popular?
Adonis peaked in 2023, reaching #175 nationally. Today it ranks #241, 66 places below that high. See the whole 2023 chart.
Adonis appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From ʼadōn (Semitic, "lord") to Adonis
The story of Adonis
Adonis began as a Semitic word for "lord" and crossed into Greek as the name of a beautiful young hunter loved by Aphrodite and killed by a wild boar — a figure worshipped in rites of mourning and renewal around the eastern Mediterranean. The archaic Greek poet Sappho left a surviving fragment lamenting him, and the Romans carried the story on in Latin. Shakespeare's long poem Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, fixed the name in English literature, and by the eighteenth century English had also borrowed it as a common noun for a strikingly handsome man. As a given name in the United States it has been on the books for over a century, though its real wave is recent, with its strongest showing in Texas, California and Florida, where the spelling is equally at home in Spanish.
Meaning
lord
The Greek name comes from the Semitic title ʼadōn, "lord" — the same root behind Hebrew Adonai. In Greek it stopped being a title and became the name of a single mythological youth.
How the name formed
- ʼadōnSemitic, "lord"
- AdōnisGreek
- AdonisLatin
- AdonisEnglish
Related forms: Adonis · Adonis · Άδωνις · Adônis · Adone
Pronouncing Adonis
uh-DON-iss
Also heard as uh-DOH-nis, with a long middle vowel. Modern Greek stresses the first syllable instead: AH-thoh-nees. In Spanish it is ah-DOH-nees.
Nicknames for Adonis
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1918
- Most boys named
- 20232,102 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #175reached in 2023
- Change vs 2023
- −30.4%1,462 in 2025, from 2,102
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Adonis in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Adonis in Spanish — same name
- Adonis in French — same name
- Άδωνις in Greek — transliteration
- Adônis in Portuguese — spelling variant
- Adone in Italian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Adoniss among us
people named Adonis are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,168 born in 2025 was named Adonis
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Kermit test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Adonis's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kermit climbed just as high around 1909, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kermit's path sketches the road Adonis is walking now.
Adonis sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Adonis is headed
Adonis should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Adonis beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Adonis in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A spelling almost everyone has already seen, in myth, in Shakespeare, or in the dictionary — rarely needs to be spelled out twice.
- Works unchanged in Spanish, French and Portuguese, which matters in the regions where it is strongest.
- Yields Don and Donnie, short forms that have stood alone as names for generations.
- A documented record stretching back to ancient Greek poetry and, before that, to a Semitic word for lord.
- In English, "an adonis" is a plain-language term for a very handsome man. Most people will make that connection at least once, and a boy may hear comments about his looks framed by his name — worth knowing in advance.
- The myth itself ends badly: Adonis is gored by a boar and mourned. It is a love story and a death story at the same time, which some families find rich and others would rather not carry.
- Two pronunciations circulate in the US, uh-DON-iss and uh-DOH-nis, so expect to correct people occasionally or simply to accept both.
- The name's rise is very recent, so most people currently carrying it are children. A boy named Adonis is unlikely to meet another at school, which some parents want and others do not.
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What they receive
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Adonis
Masculine · #241 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Adoniss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 21,500 people named Adonis are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Adonis in 2025?
- Adonis ranks #241 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,462 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Adonis?
- About 1 in every 1,168 US boys born in 2025 was named Adonis — 1,462 in all.
- Will my child share the name Adonis with classmates?
- Adonis will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Adonis
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Warren#240 · Milan#242 · Muhammad#239 · Ellis#243 · Mark#244 · Dallas#238 · Kyrie#244 · Kaiden#237
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Adonis? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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