Shade

loc · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Shade is a name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and na, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from OE sceadu/ME shade, shadwe ‘shadow’, perhaps a nickname for a very thin man; first attested Lucas Shadue 1203 Cur (C).

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria1 in 9.5K◐
  • USUnited States1 in 42K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 106K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈11K ●

across 10 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
292 ●

142K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 3.1K ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

ShadeLatin · English●235K records
สเดThai · Thai●10 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sade in NG Nigeria, FI Finland, GB United Kingdom and 14 more, ซาเดห์ in TH Thailand and Sadé in GY Guyana.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

from OE sceadu/ME shade, shadwe ‘shadow’, perhaps a nickname for a very thin man; first attested Lucas Shadue 1203 Cur (C).

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Shade is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7,887111K rec.1 in 42K7.9KShade292
NG Nigeria#8677,70814K rec.——Sade49
FI Finland—1,791△57 rec.1 in 3.1K2.2KSade11
GB United Kingdom—1,4664.7K rec.——Sade106
AU Australia—5521.8K rec.—1Sade67
CA Canada—4831.5K rec.—1Sade54
BR Brazil—445△6 rec.1 in 476K501—2
ZA South Africa—329573 rec.——Sade28
DE Germany—241807 rec.—1Sade49
IN India—223277 rec.—667Sade23
NL Netherlands—163213 rec.1 in 106K163Sade21
TR Türkiye—95335 rec.——Sade18

Roughly 7.9K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 42K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English235K70%
  • na6.7K2%
  • Finnish1531%
  • Hindi451%
  • Spanish261%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English235,21770%
na6,6632%
Finnish1531%
Hindi451%
Spanish261%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Shade is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Arabic surname5.4K records spelled Shade8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Syria, Türkiye, Tunisia, United States

    Languages: Arabic, Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Şhade, Shãdë, 'Shade

  • Spanish given name4.1K records spelled Shade15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Panama, United States, Argentina, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Shadé, Shade', Shadê, Shadè, Şhade

  • Swahili name2.7K records spelled Shade5 spellings in the group

    Also written Şhade, Shadé, Śhâďě

  • French given name2.0K records spelled Shade7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Shadé, Shãdē, Shadë, Shadè, Shâdé

  • Hindi name1.6K records spelled Shade6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Şhade, Shádê, Shadé, Shaďe

  • a separate name1.3K records spelled Shade2 spellings in the group

    Also written Shadé

  • a separate name405 records spelled Shade3 spellings in the group

    Also written Şhade

50 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Shade is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Darkness where light, particularly sunlight, is blocked.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, ndendeli

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In Portuguese, shade (subtle insults)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

02040608019001950200061 · 1986

Show as table
Shade in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
18808
18827
18857
18876
18905
18916
18927
19076
19106
191410
191512
19167
191714
191813
191910
19205
192116
19227
19237
19247
19259
192815
193010
19319
19325
19355
19376
19388
19395
19405
19416
19426
19435
19456
19505
19528
19619
19626
19646
19675
19685
19727
19758
19766
19777
19789
19798
19806
19815
19829
198315
198533
198661
198741
198842
198944
199035
199142
199237
199359
199449
199536
199641
199739
199833
199929
200035
200132
200221
200323
200415
200521
200624
200728
200826
200918
201021
201118
201226
201319
201412
201522
201614
201720
201820
201919
202014
202119
202214
202319
202417
202511

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 92 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

180018501900195020002050William August Shade, b. 1848Dave Shade, b. 1902Ellen Shade, b. 1944Nancy Shade, b. 1949Sam Shade, b. 1973Kyra Shade, b. 1973Eunice Shade, b. 1980Shade Pratt, b. 1993Jordan Shade, b. 2000Ashlynn Shade, b. 2004

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 37 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Shade
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020107.1K#4,919
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020006.9K#4,674
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020206.8K#5,024
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020837#9,024
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020733#9,024
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—91#67,906
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)198661—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)199359—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)199449—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)198944—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)199142—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)198842—

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 227 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Shade?
We estimate roughly 11 thousand people bear Shade (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Shade have the most bearers?
We estimate about 7.9 thousand people bear Shade in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled shade.
Where is Shade most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shade is densest in Finland — about 1 in 3.1 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Shade compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Shade is the 867th most common given name of 146,224 given names recorded there.
What does the name Shade mean?
Recorded meaning: from OE sceadu/ME shade, shadwe ‘shadow’, perhaps a nickname for a very thin man; first attested Lucas Shadue 1203 Cur (C).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shade

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Shade” — the 867th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Shade parses inside a full name →