Wade is an English surname that originally described someone who lived by a ford, from the Old English wadan, "to go" or "to wade"; it is also the name of a legendary sea giant in Germanic mythology. In the United States it is a classic Southern and Western name, familiar through baseball's Wade Boggs and basketball's Dwyane Wade. Wade has been in the US top 1000 throughout this century and has climbed from number 474 in 2000 to number 344 in 2025.