Hazel
Just 95 women in Poland carry it, so most people here have never met one. The name comes from Germanic, after the hazel tree.
Hazel Pronunciation
Hazel is pronounced KHAH-zel (/ˈxazɛl/).
What Hazel means
Where Hazel comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Hazel is a tree first. The word comes from Old English `hæsel`, a Germanic root with cousins across the family: German `Hasel`, Dutch `hazelaar`, Old Norse `hasl`. All of them name the same shrub, the one that drops smooth brown nuts in autumn. In Polish the tree is `leszczyna`.
The leap from botany to given name happened late. English speakers began using Hazel for daughters in the Victorian decades, when plant names came into fashion and Rose, Ivy, and Violet filled the parish records. Hazel arrived with that crop and stayed longer than most.
It kept a second meaning by accident. Because "hazel" also describes an eye colour, the brown-green shade named after the nut, the name picked up that association over time. That sense came later. The root is the tree, not the eye.
A Polish `nauczycielka` reading `Hazel` off the class register today meets a plain Germanic word for a shrub. The girl who carries it carries `leszczyna`.
How many people are named Hazel
1 in 237304 women in Poland is named Hazel. 95 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3563 among female names.
Hazel as a middle name
Hazel is a first name for 95 women in Poland and a middle name for another 40, a 70/30 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1091st, between Gül (40) and Heidi (40).
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#1089 Giovanna40
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#1090 Gül40
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#1091 Hazel40
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#1092 Heidi40
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#1093 Larisa40