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Hazel: The Baby Name That Vanished for 79 Years

Hazel was a top-20 name in 1897, then fell to #1328 and spent 79 years outside the top 100. The SSA data behind one of the great name comebacks.

If you met a baby Hazel today you would probably file her as fashionable — a little vintage, a little woodsy, of a piece with Eleanor and Clara and every other name currently being pulled out of a great-grandmother’s photo album.

You would be right. What’s easy to miss is how completely this name disappeared first. Hazel didn’t dip. It went away for the better part of a century, and the numbers are stark enough to be worth walking through.

The first Hazel era

Hazel enters the record in 1880 with 21 babies and a rank of #352. It climbs almost immediately. By 1897 it is the 18th most popular girl name in America — its best rank ever, 2,339 babies that year. It stays in that neighborhood for two decades, hitting its highest raw count in 1918 with 7,615 babies, still ranked #33.

For a stretch around the First World War, Hazel was as common as the names that feel unavoidable in a kindergarten class now. And then it falls, and it does not stop falling.

The long slide

The descent is remarkably steady — no crash, no scandal, just four decades of quiet erosion:

Hazel’s last appearance in the top 100 of the old era was 1936, at #96. Its floor came in 1983: 90 babies in the entire country, ranked #1328. From 1976 to 1997 — twenty-two consecutive years — it sat outside the top 1,000 entirely.

This is the part worth sitting with. A name that had been top-20 within living memory was, by the early 1980s, effectively extinct. Not unfashionable. Gone.

The turn

The recovery starts small and then accelerates hard:

• 2000 — 246 babies, #893. Back inside the top 1,000 for the first time in years.
• 2005 — 578 babies, #514.
• 2010 — 1,241 babies, #264.
• 2013 — 2,057 babies, #157.
• 2015 — 4,302 babies, #63.

That 2015 entry matters: it is Hazel’s first top-100 finish since 1936. Seventy-nine years between top-100 appearances. Almost nobody alive had grown up with Hazel as a normal name for a child, which is precisely what made it available again.

From there it keeps climbing — #42 in 2018, #31 in 2020, #27 in 2022, and a peak of #19 in 2024. In 2025 it sits at #21 with 6,318 babies.

Where it goes next

Our forecast model projects Hazel continuing to rise: roughly 6,800 babies in 2026, reaching about 7,500 by 2030.

That number is quietly remarkable, because Hazel’s all-time high was 7,615 babies in 1918. In raw count, the model has this name arriving within a few hundred of its own century-old record.

One honest caveat: far more babies are born in America now than in 1918, so matching the raw count is not the same as matching the share. Hazel is not about to be as culturally dominant as it was under Woodrow Wilson. But as a pure headcount, it is closing in on its own peak — a full 112 years later.

What to take from it

If you’re weighing Hazel: it is popular, and it is still climbing. A top-20 name means she will very likely meet another Hazel. That’s not a reason to avoid it — a name you love being a name other people also love is not a flaw, and plenty of parents specifically want a name that feels familiar and warm. It’s just worth choosing with your eyes open rather than assuming “vintage” still means “rare.” It hasn’t for about a decade.

And if you want the Hazel feeling without the Hazel numbers, the same revival wave is carrying a lot of names much further down the list. These twelve all peaked before 1930, all bottomed out mid-century, and are all climbing now — exactly the road Hazel took, just a few years behind:

Florence is the one to watch: it has moved from outside the top 1,000 to #391 in a decade. That is a steeper ten-year climb than Hazel’s own.

For more of this wave, see our roundup of vintage girl names coming back, or the cozy autumn names list, where Hazel turns up again.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration data.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration data, 1880–2025.