Hazlett Family History

English and northern Irish (Derry and Donegal):: topographic or habitational name from Middle English haslett (Old English hæslett) ‘hazel copse’. The name denotes a dweller by a hazel copse or someone from a place so named such as Haslett Copse in Up Marden (Sussex) or any of several minor placenames in Essex, Kent, and Surrey.

Topographic or habitational name from Middle English hesle hasel (Old Norse hesli, Old English hæsel) ‘hazel’ + Middle English he(ve)d (Old English hēafod) ‘hill, head(land)’. There are several minor places with this name in Yorkshire as well as Hazelhead in Lancaster, but the only one known to have produced a hereditary surname is Hazlehead in Rimington (Yorkshire), which is not far from Slaidburn and the border with Lancashire.

The name was taken to Ulster possibly before 1700 in Derry. It is partly or wholly through later Irish migration that the name appears so strongly in 18th- and 19th-century Lancashire and southwest Scotland as well as in other parts of England including Kent.