The instrument is named after the Mayo brothers, William J. Mayo and Charles H. Mayo, who were renowned American surgeons and co-founders of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The Hegar part of the name comes from its co-inventor, a German surgeon named Ernst August Hegar.

The Mayo Hegar needle holder was first described in 1901 by William J. Mayo and Ernst August Hegar in a medical journal called "The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children".