Harley carries 30,410 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 397, with a 2017 peak. The chart traces a clean late-2010s arc: minimal pre-2000 girl presence (the name was historically male), sharp climb across the 2010s, peak in 2017, and a gentle plateau across the early 2020s.
The Old English source
Harley derives from the Old English place name combining hara meaning "hare" with leah meaning "meadow" or "woodland clearing," giving the literal sense of "hare meadow." The name began life as an English place name and surname (Harley villages exist in Shropshire and Yorkshire) before crossing over to first-name use, initially almost exclusively for boys.
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle brand, founded in 1903 in Milwaukee, gave the name strong 20th-century American masculine register. The name's transition to feminine use in American naming is decisively a late-2010s phenomenon, accelerated almost entirely by the Harley Quinn character.
The Harley Quinn effect
The DC Comics character Harley Quinn, introduced in Batman: The Animated Series in 1992 and given lasting cinematic visibility through Margot Robbie's portrayals in Suicide Squad (2016), Birds of Prey (2020), and The Suicide Squad (2021), drove the name's American girl-name breakout. The 2017 SSA peak corresponds exactly to the year following Suicide Squad's release. The character's name itself is a play on Harlequin, the Italian commedia dell'arte trickster figure. Browse the broader Old English girl names set, or browse similar declining names on the falling names list.
The counter-reading
The Harley Quinn association is now permanent. Parents who choose Harley accept that their daughter will be associated with the Margot Robbie character throughout her childhood and adolescence, with the character's chaotic-feminine register baked into the name's modern reading. The Harley-Davidson masculine register also remains, which means older American adults will associate the name with motorcycles before the DC character.
The Harley-versus-Harleigh spelling fork is also real. The Harleigh respelling reads as more decisively feminine and modern, while Harley preserves the original surname spelling. The bearer will spend a lifetime confirming which version her parents chose.
The two-syllable HAR-lee rhythm is bright and clean, with no obvious shorter forms. Sibling pairings work across the unisex surname cluster: Harley and Riley, Harley and Finley, Harley and Bailey, Harley and Charley. Middle names tend distinctly feminine to balance the unisex first: Harley Rose, Harley Grace, Harley Mae, Harley Marie.