Shade — #5436 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Shade

The Social Security Administration has registered 1,144 babies named Shade between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Shade currently holds the #5436 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1997, when 33 babies received it in a single year. Shade is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 863 additional births since 1976.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Shade performed strongest in the 1990s, accumulating 224 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Shade shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Kentucky, which accounts for 11 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by North Carolina and Ohio. In total, SSA state-level files list Shade in 7 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Shade in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 1,144 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.