Interesting, never heard of that. Part of the reason could be that a deca-Newton is very close to the weight of a kilogram of mass in Earth’s gravity.
30 Helens is a KITH 
While we’re on the subject of decibels (or, to get back to it), why is the standard unit a decibel, and not just a bel? When I was in grade school, they told me that one bel was such a large difference in loudness that they typically use decibel as the standard unit. But, is that really important? According to this site one bell is approximately the sound of someone breathing. Normal conversation is about 5-6.5 bels. City traffic around 8 bels. Continuous exposure to levels above 9 bels can lead to hearing loss.
Perhaps the real reason is that bel sounds a lot like bell (perhaps, exactly like), and the phrase “as loud as a bell” (to indicate loud and clear) could get confused with “as loud as a bel” (which would be very quiet).
the unit was originally meant for measuring transmission loss in communications cable, not sound pressure.
[duplicated]
If you think of 1 bel = 10x power, that seems quite natural as a base unit, and is easy to remember. But, for practical engineering, people evidently found decibels more convenient, as 3 dB is already twice the power. It does have the effect that one rarely sees another, or no, prefix. Sort of like when people state the circumference of the Earth is 40000 km, rather than 40.0 Mm
On the other hand, solar physicists frequently use Mm for describing the size of features on the surface of the Sun.
Thirty Helens Agree.
Here, a couple dozen miles northwest of you, our water bill is measured in ccfs, or hundreds of cubic feet. Does yours really come with the increased precision?
Sadly, in the NY tri-state area our gas usage is measure in Therms, our water usage in Gallons, and land area in square feet (as evidenced by all the CBRE “For Lease” signs on our commercial real estate).
Did we mention Centilitres for wine and other alcohol?
I’m trying to think of electrical units that might meet the OP’s concept, but Farads, Henrys, Volts, Ohms, Siemens, Watts, Amperes, Gauss, Telsas, Coulombs and the like all seem to have powers of ten in practical usage (e.g. 2 kilo-ohm resistor, 10 ohms, 50 milli-ohms, etc)
Several of us knew a guy in college, “Vern” who, to put it mildly, was not gifted with attractive features. We collectively coined the unit of a milliVern as being so ugly you could stop a loaded semi-truck.
We coined another unit on this board, based in part on the ugliness of another poster, but that’s another tale for another day.
Tripler
I think I’m one picoVern. Not too ugly, but I unfortunately make babies cry.
In the field of medications, doses are always (that I’ve seen) measured in milligrams or micrograms, never in other multiples. Sometimes, doses are as large as thousands of milligrams (yes, whole grams) yet those doses are never described in grams.
For examples, I had a Rx of amoxicillin tablets of 500 milligrams each, but these were not described as 0.5 grams.
I have this here bottle of generic acetaminophen tablets of 500 milligrams each, also not described as being 0.5 grams. The instructions suggest taking two tablets (1000 milligrams) at a time up to a maximum of 2500 milligrams a day. These amounts are 1 whole gram and 2.5 grams, yet such doses are never written that way.
Micrograms are a common unit of measure for inhaled medications.
When I was in grad school, the instruction manual for our turbo pump said “do this until XXX microns, then do that until YYY microns”. It took a fair bit of head scratching before we figured out that they meant micrometers of mercury.
Clearly I should have read a bit further
I was trained in the submarine service that the limit for surface contamination was 450 micromicroCuries per 100 cm^2, often known as “450 MickeyMikes”. I never did figure out what was wrong with 4.5 pCi / cm^2.
A common joke was “What do you do if you frisk out of the reactor compartment with 1800 MickeyMikes on your hand? Wipe your hands together for 900. Wipe your hands on your pants for 450. You’re clean!”
I don’t understand. It has an arbitrary reference point: absolute zero. That might be a good starting point, but I don’t see how that is less arbitrary than the freezing point of water.
Absolute temperature is not arbitrary, though. It measures something, e.g., the ratio between internal energy (heat) and entropy change, the average kinetic energy of gas particles, etc. Absolute zero means something, but there is an arbitrary choice to make for the size of your temperature unit. Water comes into it merely as a reference point; in modern terms, Boltzmann’s constant is defined so that the triple point of water is what you would expect.
A couple of relevant definitions of Arbitrary:
subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one’s discretion
undetermined; not assigned a specific value
And one for Absolute:
something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc.
0 K is absolute because it’s not arbitrary (a bit circular I know…). It applies everywhere. Near the Sun or in the outer planets, water freezing is not too useful
Pardon the bump, but I remembered:
In Hungary, at least, both centiliters and deciliters are commonly used. (Shots at bars are usually given in 2 and 4 centi, and wines quantities are usually given by the deciliter – 2 being typical.) I failed to notice whether this was a particularly Hungarian quirk or not. Picking an arbitrary German bar menu at random (one in Freiburg), I see they list their shots in cLs, as well, but the wine as a decimal part of a liter.