Hadley

An English surname derived from place names meaning a clearing overgrown with heather. It spent nearly a century as an obscure, occasional entry in American birth rolls. The name shifted decisively toward girls in the early twenty-first century, aided by historical fiction and the broader appetite for surname-first choices.

The name belongs almost entirely to people who were born after the launch of the iPad. A Hadley is pictured holding a field hockey stick, a Hydro Flask covered in vinyl stickers, or middle-school permission slips. The sound is brisk and tailored, with none of the nineteenth-century lace of older revival names. Most people named Hadley are currently negotiating screen time limits.