Hailey

As a personal name Hailey has no medieval pedigree and no saints. It belongs entirely to the recent tradition of converting English surnames into feminine given names, joining Kelsey, Lindsey, and Ashley.

The surname itself was carried by the astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742), whose calculations of cometary orbits led to the prediction and posthumous identification of Halley’s Comet, although his surname is etymologically distinct, deriving from

“holy” or from another place name.

The popular breakthrough came almost entirely through the British actress Hayley Mills, daughter of Sir John Mills, who starred in the Disney films Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961).

Her enormous popularity introduced the name to American audiences, who increasingly preferred the spelling Hailey from the 1980s onward.

The Canadian pop singer Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin), wife of Justin Bieber, has been a prominent contemporary bearer, as has American actress Hailee Steinfeld, who uses yet another variant.

Hailey first entered the United States Social Security Administration top 1,000 in 1981 at 912th, climbing rapidly through the 1990s.

The spelling Hailey overtook Haley and Hayley in the early 2000s and reached its peak at 20th in 2008. It currently sits within the top 120 in its primary spelling, though the combined total of all variants ranks higher.

The name is overwhelmingly North American, with markedly lower use in Britain itself. It exemplifies the late-twentieth-century preference for soft, surname-derived girl names ending in the open -ey sound.