Sodium α-hydroxyl dodecanoate (SHD) was simply synthesized directly from α-chlorine dodecanoic acid (CDA) through hydrothermal alkaline hydrolysis, and structure of α-hydroxyl dodecanoic acid (HDA), the acidified product of SHD, was identified by FT-IR and 1H NMR. The influence of reaction temperatures, reaction times and alkaline concentrations on the yield of SHD was investigated. The experimental results indicated that the yield of SHD was 98.7 % when alkaline hydrolysis was run under hydrothermal conditions in w(NaOH)=10 % aqueous NaOH solution and n(NaOH) : n(CDA) = 2.1 : 1 at 160 ℃ for 6 h. Some surfactant properties of SHD such as Kraft point (KP), hard ion resistance, requirement of lime soap dispersant, foaming ability, surface tension and cmc were determined and compared with sodium dodecanoate (SD). It was showed that the KP of SHD was 35 ℃ and 8 ℃ lower than that of parent SD, which means SHD had better cold water solubility. The hard ion resistance of SHD was somewhat higher than that of SD and the requirement of lime soap dispersant of SHD decreased to one half of the SD which showed that SHD displayed better solubility in hard water than that of SD. Therefore, SHD showed the potential to act as the new soap-base material applied in cold water or hard water.