How popular is the baby name Sade in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Sade.
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Nigerian-born British singer Sade Adu (born Helen Folasade Adu) formed her eponymous smooth jazz band Sade in the early 1980s.
The band went on to see massive success in the mid-1980s with its first two albums: Diamond Life (1984) and Promise (1985). These albums included the popular singles “Smooth Operator” [vid], “Your Love Is King,” “The Sweetest Taboo,” and “Never as Good as the First Time” — each of which reached the U.S. Hot 100 in either 1985 or 1986.
Notably, on the debut album, the band’s record label (Epic) decided to include a suggested pronunciation of the band’s name: shar-day. This pronunciation could be found on all formats of the album, from the vinyl record to the cassette tape to the CD:
The problem? Shar-day is the British-English pronunciation of Sade. Brits often drop their R’s — they speak a non-rhotic version of English — so shar-day to a Brit is essentially shah-day to an American.
But the label forgot to account for this dialectical difference when they released the album overseas, and Americans were forced to conclude that Sade, despite not including the letter R, somehow featured an audible R-sound.
Even the Chicago Tribune emphasized this mispronunciation in a December 1985 article entitled, “The Name is Shar-Day“:
Not ”Sahd,” not ”Sayd,” not ”Say-dy.”
”Shar-day.”
The band’s success had a big impact on American baby names. The name Sade was the top debut name of 1985 (in fact, it was one of the top debut names of all time) and it saw peak popularity in 1986. Even more interesting, though, is the sheer number of variant spellings featuring that letter R.
Here are Sade and all the Sade-variants I could find in the mid-1980s U.S. baby name data, sorted by 1986 levels of usage:
(The last 3 names — Chardey, Chada and Sadea — were one-hit wonders.)
Finally, as a reward for making it to the end of this post, here’s a clip of a young Sade Adu talking about her name. Be sure to listen until the end, where she laughs and says, “American people tend to go sharrr-day.”
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 2, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 2-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “twos” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Aurora correspond to the numbers 1, 21, 18, 15, 18, and 1. The sum of these numbers is 74. The digits of 74 added together equal 11, and the digits of 11 added together equal 2 — the numerological value of Aurora.
Baby names with a value of 2
Below you’ll find the most popular 2-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
2 via 11
The letters in the following baby names add up to 11, which reduces to two (1+1=2).
Girl names (2 via 11)
Boy names (2 via 11)
Adea, Fe, Aia
Aj, Ja, Cabe
2 via 20
The letters in the following baby names add up to 20, which reduces to two (2+0=2).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number two. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 2 being described as “diplomatic,” “cooperative,” “peaceful,” “gentle,” and “understanding.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 2:
Hands
Feet
Eyes
Ears
Lungs
Chopsticks
Knitting needles
Complementary pairings (e.g., pen and paper, bow and arrow, peanut butter and jelly)
Dualities (e.g., day and night, yin and yang, war and peace)
Boxing (2 competitors; 2 fists)
Partner dancing
DNA double helix
What does the number 2 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
Jacqueli debuted with 157 baby girls in 1989. Same reason as #17.
Toccara, #15
Toccara debuted with 182 baby girls in 1981. Inspired by the Avon perfume Toccara.
Yaire, #14
Yaire debuted with 184 baby girls in 2001. Inspired by singer Yaire.
Ajee, #13
Ajee debuted with 185 baby girls in 1994. Inspired by the Revlon perfume Ajee.
Greidys, #12
Greidys debuted with 186 baby girls in 2009. Inspired by Greidys Gil, winner of the TV beauty pageant Nuestra Belleza Latina 2009.
Ayanna, #11
Ayanna debuted with 194 baby girls in 1971. Inspired by two things: an article on African names in Jet magazine, and Ayanna (b. 1971), baby of comedian/activist Dick Gregory.
Care to make any guesses about the names in the top 10?
More of the top 50 baby name debuts for girls: 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11, 10-1
Image: Adapted from LotusBud0048a (public domain) by Frank “Fg2” Gualtieri
[Latest update: 7/2021]
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