Hale
Masculine · “nook or corner of land”
Hale is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,282 boys against 14 girls since 1880.
Nathan Hale was hanged as a spy in 1776 at the age of twenty-one, and the sentence attributed to him made his surname into an American given name. Almost no other name in this collection was created by a single execution.
How old is the name Hale?
Hale first appears in US birth records in 1892 — 133 years ago. The typical Hale alive today was born around 1954, making them about 71 years old. About 700 people named Hale are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Hale most popular?
Hale peaked in 1896, reaching #900 nationally. Today it ranks #6446, 5,546 places below that high. See the whole 1896 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From halh to Hale
The story of Hale
Nathan Hale was a Connecticut schoolteacher who volunteered to gather intelligence behind British lines on Long Island, was captured and hanged without trial, and became one of the first American martyrs of the Revolution; his statue stands at Yale and outside the CIA. American families began using the surname as a given name in the nineteenth century as an act of patriotic commemoration, exactly as they did with Warren, Otis and Marion. Hale's best year on record is 1896, in the middle of that habit's strongest period, and the double meaning of the ordinary English adjective did the name no harm.
Meaningscholars disagree
nook or corner of land, or healthy
Two English words converge. Old English halh means a nook, a recess, or a secluded piece of ground, and it gives a great many English place names and the surname Hale. Old English hal means whole or healthy, and gives the adjective hale as in hale and hearty. The surname is normally from the first; the given name in nineteenth-century America may well be reaching for the second.
How the name formed
- halh
- Hale
- Hale
Related forms: Hales · Haile
Pronouncing Hale
HAYL
One syllable, rhyming with pale. Identical to the English adjective, and to the unrelated word hail.
Nicknames for Hale
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1892
- Most boys named
- 193126 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #900reached in 1896
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%13 in 2025, from 13
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Hale in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Hales in English — related form
- Haile in English — spelling variant
Hales among us
people named Hale are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 131,390 born in 2025 was named Hale
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Hale sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Hale beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Hale in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable and four letters, with no possible mispronunciation.
- A documented American historical figure behind it.
- The adjective meaning, healthy and vigorous, is a pleasant coincidence.
- It is a homophone of hail, both the weather and the greeting.
- Haley and Hale are close enough to be confused in speech.
- It reads as a nineteenth-century American name, because that is its period.
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Hale
Masculine · #6446 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Hales are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Hale are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Hale in 2025?
- Hale ranks #6446 among US boy names in 2025, with 13 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Hale?
- About 1 in every 131,390 US boys born in 2025 was named Hale — 13 in all.
- Will my child share the name Hale with classmates?
- Hale will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Hale
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rollie#6446 · Billie#6446 · Worth#6446 · Blas#6446 · Starling#6446 · Alvis#6446 · Elwyn#6446 · Rollin#6446
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Hale? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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