Hadley
Meaning
place name/surname, "heather field"
The story
Hadley is an English place name, traditionally the heather field, and like most place names it spent centuries as a surname before anyone thought of it as a first name. The American association is literary: Hadley Richardson was Ernest Hemingway's first wife, the one who was there for Paris and who lost a suitcase containing most of his early manuscripts. Our records show the name is now almost entirely given to girls, about 46,600 to 2,100. Its climb is one of the steepest in this batch: 467 babies in the 1980s, 1,393 in the 1990s, 5,322 in the 2000s, and nearly 25,900 in the 2010s. That is a fiftyfold increase across thirty years for a name that had never once been common in US records.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Hadley peaked in the 2010s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
63 people · the #56,841 first name in Brazil · median age 25
Among people named Hadley living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Hadley
Most people given the name Hadley in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Hadley deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Hadley truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Hadley fits with your family’s names and surname.
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