How popular is the baby name Sadea 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 Sadea.

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Popularity of the baby name Sadea


Posts that mention the name Sadea

Interesting one-hit wonder names in the U.S. baby name data

single flower

They came, they went, and they never came back!

These baby names are one-hit wonders in the U.S. baby name data. That is, they’ve only popped up once, ever, in the entire dataset of U.S. baby names (which accounts for all names given to at least 5 U.S. babies per year since 1880).

There are thousands of one-hit wonders in the dataset, but the names below have interesting stories behind their single appearance, so these are the one-hits I’m writing specific posts about. Just click on a name to read more.

2020s

  • (none yet)

2010s

2000s

1990s

1980s

1970s

1960s

1950s

1940s

1930s

1920s

1910s

1900s

  • (none yet)

1890s

As I discover (and write about) more one-hit wonders in the data, I’ll add the names/links to this page. In the meanwhile, do you have any favorite one-hit wonder baby names?

Image: Adapted from Solitary Poppy by Andy Beecroft under CC BY-SA 2.0.

[Latest update: Dec. 2023]

Where did the baby name Sade (shah-day) come from in 1985?

The single "Smooth Operator" (1984) by Sade.
Sade single

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:

“Diamond Life” 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:

Name1984198519861987
Sade.393*
[rank: 513th]
1,245
[rank: 213th]
626
[rank: 373rd]
Shardae.129*200
[rank: 836th]
99
Sharde.124*190
[rank: 876th]
87
Sharday.100*170
[rank: 938th]
80
Sharda.7011165
Charde.67*10544
Chardae.50*8151
Shade.336141
Shadae.29*5841
Shada5264738
Shaday.13*4022
Shardai.33*3319
Charday.24*3219
Charda.12*2013
Chade.6†185
Shardey.5*17.
Chadae.5*12.
Chardai.10*1011
Shadai.8*106
Folasade.5*1011
Shardee.11*9.
Shadea..7*10
Shardea.11*610
Shardaye..6*5
Chardee.5*5.
Shawday..5*.
Chardey..5*.
Chada.5*..
Sadea.5*..
*Debut, †Gender-specific debut

(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.”

What do think of the name Sade?

Sources: Sade – Wikipedia, Sade Chart History | Billboard