Does "bae" really stand for "Before Anyone Else"?

No. That is a backronym invented after the word caught on. Dictionaries and linguists trace "bae" to a shortening of "babe" or "baby," rooted in African American English.

Is National Bae Day a public holiday?

No. It is an unofficial cultural observance with no government recognition, so June 10 is a normal working day.

Who created National Bae Day?

No founder, organization, or campaign is documented. The day appeared on online holiday calendars around 2015, as the slang term "bae" reached its mainstream peak.

Is National Bae Day the same as Valentine's Day or other love days?

No, they are separate observances. Valentine's Day is February 14, while love-themed days like National Lover's Day (April 23), National Couple's Day (August 18), and National I Love You Day (October 14) fall on their own dates.

Does "bae" only mean a romantic partner?

Not necessarily. People use it for partners, close friends, and even favorite things, and it also works as a verb and an adjective in casual speech.

National Bae Day

Next celebratedThursday, June 10, 2027

An unofficial observance on June 10 in the United States honoring romantic partners and other loved ones through the slang pet name "bae."

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Last updated March 19, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJune 10

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYRelationships

SUBCATEGORYRomance

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2015

“The word arrived first. The holiday followed it onto the calendar around 2015.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

An internet pet name that grew its own holiday.

No documented founder or formal establishment record exists for National Bae Day. The observance surfaced in online holiday calendars around 2015, during the peak mainstream adoption of the slang term "bae," and spread through social media rather than any proclamation, law, or campaign.

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INTRO

The pet name that outran its own fake backstory

Ask around and someone will tell you that "bae" stands for "Before Anyone Else." It is a tidy story, and it is wrong. Dictionaries and linguists trace the word to something far plainer: a clipped, dropped-consonant version of "babe" or "baby," with roots in African American English.

The acronym is a backronym, a meaning stitched onto a word after the fact. The earliest evidence of the "Before Anyone Else" claim on Twitter dates to July 2011, years after "bae" was already turning up in rap songs. The word came first. The story came later.

National Bae Day, fixed to June 10, is the calendar's answer to that little word. It has no founder and no proclamation behind it. It is a day built entirely out of slang, which makes the slang worth getting right.

ORIGINS

Bae Day history

INTRODUCTION

The word did not begin with the holiday. It began as a sound, the kind that happens when speakers shave a syllable off something they say all the time.

CHAPTER 01

A consonant goes missing

Linguist Neal Whitman puts it simply: "It started as a clipped form of baby or babe." Drop the final sound from "babe" and you are most of the way to "bae." The same instinct that turns "party" into "par-tay" was at work in reverse.

Whitman places the origin squarely in African American English, alongside pet names like "boo." Music critic Jalylah Burrell, writing for Oxford University Press, called "bae" "quite simply a devolution of babe". None of these accounts needs an acronym to explain anything.

CHAPTER 02

From rap verse to selfie caption

The word surfaced in commercial music early. It shows up in JoJo's 2004 hit "Leave (Get Out)," and in rap lyrics from around 2005. For a while it stayed a quiet term of endearment.

Then the internet got hold of it. In 2012 the "bae caught me slippin'" meme took over feeds, with people posting obvious selfies dressed up as candid shots a partner had snapped. The joke spread the word faster than any dictionary could.

CHAPTER 03

The mainstream moment

By 2014 "bae" was everywhere. Pharrell Williams released "Come Get It Bae," featuring Miley Cyrus, and the term rode pop radio into ordinary speech. That same year Oxford Dictionaries shortlisted it for Word of the Year.

The crowning irony is that the backronym arrived during this boom, not before it. A word with a humble, sound-based origin got handed a flattering false history right as the whole country started using it.

CHAPTER 04

The holiday catches up

A word this popular was bound to get a date. Around 2015, as "bae" hit its peak, June 10 began appearing on online holiday calendars as National Bae Day. No person, brand, or campaign claimed it. It simply formed the way the word itself had, from the bottom up, passed along until it stuck.

TIMELINE

Timeline

An early appearance in a hit song

"Bae" turns up in JoJo's chart hit "Leave (Get Out)," one of the earliest cited uses in popular music.

The dictionaries take note

The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest documented evidence for the word "bae" dates from this year.

"Bae caught me slippin'"

A selfie meme built on the word goes viral, pushing "bae" deep into internet culture.

Nominated as a word of the year

Lexicographer Grant Barrett nominates "bae" for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year.

Pharrell and the Oxford shortlist

Pharrell Williams releases "Come Get It Bae," and Oxford Dictionaries names "bae" a Word of the Year runner-up.

National Bae Day appears

June 10 begins showing up on online holiday calendars as the word reaches its mainstream peak.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Bae Day

LANGUAGE

A street pet name that talked its way into the dictionary.

"Bae" did not stay on the street. Merriam-Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Wiktionary all carry entries for it, each tracing it back to "babe" rather than any acronym. The day quietly celebrates a slang term that earned a permanent spot in the reference shelf.

GRAMMAR

It outgrew being a noun

By 2015 people were using "bae" as a verb and an adjective, as in "to bae or nah to bae" for pairing up, or "that's so bae" for anything desirable. Few pet names stretch across that many parts of speech.

PEOPLE

It honors a label, not a relationship status

Unlike days built around couples, "bae" was always flexible. People use it for a partner, a best friend, even a favorite food. June 10 belongs to whomever or whatever you would call yours.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Bae Day

It briefly meant "poop" in Danish

As "bae" went global, Danish speakers pointed out an awkward overlap: "bæ" is a children's word for poop. The pet name and the potty word are unrelated, but the coincidence gave the internet a field day.

Linguists gave the acronym six reasons to die

Neal Whitman did not just doubt the "Before Anyone Else" story. He laid out six separate reasons it is fabricated, noting the acronym surfaced roughly six years after the word was already in use.

A scholarly panel weighed in

When Oxford University Press gathered linguists and critics to discuss "bae" in 2014, one noted it had appeared on Urban Dictionary as far back as 2008, long before most people had heard it.

The word beat the dictionary by years

The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest written evidence for "bae" is from 2006, but the word was already in rap lyrics around 2005. Speech, as usual, ran ahead of the page.

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