The Strange Roots

Ada 🦋

Ada, designed by a team led by French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah, was named after Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer.

Root: The name Ada could be a short form of the Germanic Adal meaning 'noble' or a Latinized version of the Hebrew Adah meaning 'adornment'.

The Countess of Lovelace, who was the daughter of Lord Byron, is best known for her work on the Analytical Engine, a mechanical computer designed by Charles Babbage, often regarded as "the father of the computer".


Ada aged 17
A watercolour portrait of Ada Lovelace in around 1840.

She met Babbage at a reception when she was just 17 years old and the two struck up a correspondence over mathematical ideas that lasted for many years.

A note written by Ada in a 1843 book detailing how Babbage's Analytical Engine could compute Bernoulli numbers is widely regarded as the first published computer algorithm.

Sources: Ada Lovelace.