Hattie
- Pronunciation
- [Ha-ttie]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Rules Her Household. Feminine Of Harry From Henry.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Hattie
Hattie is the English short form of Harriet (see separate entry on Harriet for the Old Germanic Heimirich etymology — the feminine form of Henry, meaning "home ruler" or "ruler of the home"). Hattie has been used as a casual diminutive of Harriet in English-speaking countries since at least the 18th century, transitioning from nickname to standalone first name in 19th and 20th-century American naming.
Notable bearers include the iconic American actress Hattie McDaniel (1893–1952, the iconic African-American actress who in 1939 became the first African-American to win an Oscar — for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind); American journalist Hattie Caraway (1878–1950, the first woman elected to the US Senate, 1932–1945); and contemporary American actress Hattie Morahan (born 1978, the British actress).
Hattie held a US top-25 girls' rank from 1880 through 1900 — about two decades of late-Victorian American popularity. After a long mid-20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Sadie, Maggie, and Maisie. Hattie climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its compact warm vintage-American register — two short syllables, soft consonants, instantly readable, and the in-built Harriet/home-ruler etymological register. The strong Hattie McDaniel American film-history cultural anchor and Hattie Caraway American political-history anchor maintain the name's significance. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since Hattie is itself a nickname-shape — the rare Hat (back-end shortening) and Hatty each occasionally appear; the longer formal Harriet, Henrietta, or Hatherly are sometimes used as Hattie's official-document version. International forms include Henriette (French), Enrichetta (Italian), Henrieta (Slovak), and the broader Henry/Harriet family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Hattie
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Hattie by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1914 with 1,678 girls named Hattie (girl rank #97 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #334 for girls (923 US births). That's 237 places below its 1914 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Hattie Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Hattie the strongest states are South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | #104 | 83 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #106 | 102 |
| 3 | Montana | #142 | 44 |
| 4 | Arkansas | #144 | 188 |
| 5 | Nebraska | #161 | 135 |
| 6 | Minnesota | #173 | 298 |
| 7 | Maine | #183 | 25 |
| 8 | Iowa | #205 | 164 |
| 9 | Kansas | #208 | 147 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | #210 | 187 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #888 | 71 |
| 2 | Maryland | #814 | 32 |
| 3 | Arizona | #783 | 50 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #747 | 126 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #711 | 21 |
| 6 | Michigan | #555 | 142 |
| 7 | Illinois | #532 | 193 |
| 8 | Virginia | #520 | 142 |
| 9 | Washington | #483 | 134 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #478 | 109 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Hattie in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Hattie?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Hattie to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Hattie against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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