Hazel peaked on the SSA chart in 1918, the same year Armistice Day ended the First World War. The name then slid steadily downward for sixty years, falling out of the top 1000 entirely between 1976 and 1997. The 2010s revival brought Hazel back to the top 20 — a comeback span that closely matches Violet, Eleanor, and the broader Edwardian flower-and-tree cluster.
From hazel tree to given name
Hazel comes directly from the Old English haesel, the name of the small deciduous tree common across northern Europe. The hazel was significant in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon folklore — associated with wisdom, divination, and the salmon of knowledge in Irish mythology — but its use as a personal name in English appears only in the 19th century, alongside Daisy, Lily, Iris, Rose, and the broader botanical naming wave that followed Victorian fashion.
Hazel was firmly established as a girls' name by 1900 and reached its peak SSA rank of #19 in 1918. The post-war decline mirrored that of the entire Edwardian-era cohort: by the 1960s the flower and tree names felt distinctly old-fashioned, and Hazel disappeared from the top 200 by 1976, then from the top 1000 entirely.
The Fault in Our Stars effect
John Green's novel The Fault in Our Stars was published in 2012, with Hazel Grace Lancaster as its first-person narrator. The 2014 film adaptation, with Shailene Woodley in the role, brought the name to a much wider audience. The SSA chart shows Hazel inside the top 200 in 2010, the top 100 by 2014, and the top 50 by 2017 — a four-year acceleration that closely tracks the book and film release schedule.
What separates Hazel from typical pop-culture-driven climbs is that the name was already moving before The Fault in Our Stars. Julia Roberts named her daughter Hazel in 2004; Daniel Craig named his daughter Hazel in 2018; smaller celebrity uses had been visible through the early 2000s. Green's novel accelerated a trend that was already underway, much as Luna's climb began with Harry Potter but continued long after the books.
The nature-name 2020s
Hazel sits at the center of the contemporary nature-name aesthetic alongside Willow, Ivy, Violet, Iris, and Juniper. Naming-forum patterns consistently group these names together as a coherent style — botanical, brief, vaguely Edwardian, quietly idiosyncratic. The cluster is one of the most legible naming aesthetics of the past decade, and Hazel is its most successful chart entry.
The counter-reading worth noting: Hazel's growth has flattened since 2022, holding around #19-21 rather than continuing the climb. The historical pattern for nature-name revivals suggests Hazel may have reached its natural ceiling — Lily and Willow show similar plateau patterns. Parents picking Hazel in 2025 should expect the name to feel distinctly 2010s-2020s in fifteen years, much as Heather feels distinctly 1970s today.
Sibling pairings on naming forums consistently feature Eleanor, Violet, and Wren. Boys' names that pair cleanly: Henry, Felix, Theodore, Otis. Common middle-name patterns are short and crisp: Hazel Rose, Hazel Mae, Hazel Grace, Hazel June. The two-syllable first works equally well with single-syllable or two-syllable middles.