Hadley
Hadley reached its high-water mark in 2014 at number 100, and has been recorded 48,691 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 121st. About 48,000 Hadleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hadley boys named Hadley
Girls and boys called Hadley
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Hadley crossed from boys to girls in 1973, and has stayed there for 51 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 99% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 53 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 48,691
- Estimated living today
- 48,000
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2014
- Best rank
- 100th
- Rank in 2025
- 121st
- First recorded
- 1906
- Girls / boys
- 46,595 / 2,096
How old the living Hadleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 48,691 babies given the name since 1906, about 48,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 42,000 of them are children and 150 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
From Old English hǣþ (“heath”) + Old English leah (“woodland clearing”). Equivalent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Hadley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hadley is most concentrated in Utah (3.2×), Idaho (2.9×), North Dakota (2.6×), Montana (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2014
The most popular girls’ names the year Hadley peaked:
Hadley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Hadley | 1,372 | 433rd |
| England and Wales girls | Hadley | 421 | 936th |
| Scotland girls | Hadley | 40 | 418th |
| Scotland boys | Hadley | 10 | 609th |
| France boys | Hadley | 5 | 5,893rd |
| Ireland girls | Hadley | 4 | 700th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Hadley | 3 | 418th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Hadley against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.