Wade comes from an English surname, that has two possible meanings and origins. It can derive from the Old English verb ‘wadan’ meaning ‘to go,’ or as a habitational name from the Old English word ‘(ge)wæd’ meaning ‘ford’.
Wade is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Wade isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Wade ranks 386. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Wade. In the entire USA, approximately 68,366 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Wade. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
Wade comes from an English surname, that has two possible meanings and origins. It can derive from the Old English verb ‘wadan’ meaning ‘to go,’ or as a habitational name from the Old English word ‘(ge)wæd’ meaning ‘ford’.
What is a ford? A ford is a shallow place with good footing where a river or stream may be crossed by wading.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Wade annualy. This means that there have been boys named Wade who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Wade have consistently been special. A small flight of popularity was experienced by the name way back in the last century and in one particular year, parents liked Wade even more than any other time: in 1966, it holds its present record at rank #180 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Wade was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Wade has never been ranked higher than #180. In 2022, he rivaled the 336 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 945 boys named Wade were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Wade were born, there have been 686 newborns who received this name.
The name Wade may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Wade is apparently especially popular in North Dakota. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 703 men in North Dakota is called Wade. In total, that’s 810 people who feel addressed when the name Wade is shouted loudly across North Dakota and who ensure that their name makes it to #175 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Wade as the answer a total of 68,366 times. This places Wade at #364 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Wade as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter W is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with a W, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, W is by no means the rarest initial. While J, A and D are the most common first letters of boys' names, X, U and Q are the least common initials of feminine first names.
With four letters, the name Wade is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.5% of all boys’ names begin with a W, this initial occurs less than half as often as the other letters on average. By the way, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a W, William is currently the most common.
If your name is Wade and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Wade, you can simply say:
Windmill
Apple
Dinosaur
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Wade
Wade
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
A
D
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
W
A
D
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Wade sounds like this:
