Hartley

Where Hartley comes from

Hartley hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1902
    Hartley Shawcross born
    British politician
  2. 1984
    First appearance
    #9,144 among girls, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  3. 1985
    Hartley Sawyer born
    American actor
  4. 1999
    Mostly girls from here
    Until now more boys than girls got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
  5. 2025
    Peak, #1,452
    148 babies named Hartley — more than any year before or since.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Hartley Sawyer · American actor, born 1985
  • Hartley Shawcross · British politician, 1902–2003
  • Hartley Power · British actor, 1894–1966
  • Hartley Coleridge · British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher, 1796–1849
  • Hartley T. Ferrar · Irish geologist, botanical collector and scientific collector, 1879–1932

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.