Hayley
- Pronunciation
- [Hay-ley]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- From The Hay Meadow
- Origin
- English
About the Name Hayley
Hayley is an English name rooted in Old English topography: hēg ("hay") combined with lēah ("meadow" or "clearing"), yielding the meaning "from the hay meadow." It began as a surname in northern English communities — particularly in Yorkshire, where hay meadows shaped the rural landscape — before becoming a given name through the twentieth-century fashion for transferring English place-surnames to first-name use. The name shares this origin with Haley and Hailey, its most common spelling variants, all of which rose together as part of the same broad naming wave that swept English-speaking countries from the 1990s onward.
Hayley belongs to a phonetically consistent family of names whose bright two-syllable rhythm — initial H, long A, liquid ending — has made them a persistent fixture in English-speaking naming charts for decades. The name's fresh, outdoor quality and its easy pronunciation across dialects contribute to its sustained appeal, even as individual spellings rise and fall in fashion relative to one another.
Hayley first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, the year it also peaked at #149, accumulating 21,084 top-1000 births across its tracked span. After a gradual decline, the name held on through recent years, sitting at #832 in 2022, #970 in 2023, and remaining in the charts as of those recent counts. Recorded variants include Haile, Hailey, Haley, Halle, and Hallie.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Hayley
US Popularity History (2000–2023)
Annual US births named Hayley by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 2,300 girls named Hayley (girl rank #149 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2023, ranked #970 for girls (266 US births). That's 821 places below its 2000 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 Hayley 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 Hayley the strongest states are Connecticut, Nevada, Massachusetts.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connecticut | #447 | 48 |
| 2 | Nevada | #450 | 20 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #498 | 111 |
| 4 | New York | #525 | 325 |
| 5 | Colorado | #555 | 59 |
| 6 | Maryland | #556 | 87 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #564 | 129 |
| 8 | Iowa | #586 | 17 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #596 | 43 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #618 | 29 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #896 | 80 |
| 2 | Texas | #862 | 298 |
| 3 | Washington | #812 | 58 |
| 4 | Indiana | #804 | 39 |
| 5 | Michigan | #762 | 59 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #760 | 100 |
| 7 | Ohio | #742 | 112 |
| 8 | Illinois | #730 | 91 |
| 9 | Alabama | #727 | 19 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #718 | 58 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Hayley in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Hayley?
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 Hayley to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Hayley against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).