Will
Will is a boy's name that peaked in 1888, when it was the 28th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,193rd. About 20,000 Wills are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 31.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Will boys named Will
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 46,610
- Estimated living today
- 20,000
- Median age today
- 31
- Peak year
- 1888
- Best rank
- 28th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,193rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 658 / 45,952
How old the living Wills are
born that year still alive today
Of the 46,610 babies given the name since 1880, about 20,000 are alive — 43 in every hundred. Roughly 4,900 of them are children and 2,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1994 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
or Willow, less often, other given names beginning with Wil-, such as Wilfred or Willard.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wills
- Will Smith (born 1968)American actor, film producer and rapper
- Will Ferrell (born 1967)American actor, comedian, screenwriter and producer
- Will Durant (1885–1981)American historian, philosopher and writer
- Will Rogers (1879–1935)American humorist and entertainer
- Will Poulter (born 1993)British actor
- Will Champion (born 1978)English drummer
- Will Eisner (1917–2005)American cartoonist, writer and entrepreneur
- Will Patton (born 1954)American actor
People named Will with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Will is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Will is most concentrated in Mississippi (7.2×), Alabama (4.3×), Tennessee (3.0×), Arkansas (2.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1888
The most popular boys’ names the year Will peaked:
Will elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Will | 3,193 | 188th |
| France boys | Will | 565 | 1,072nd |
| Ireland boys | Will | 399 | 179th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Will | 216 | 143rd |
| Belgium boys | Will | 214 | 379th |
| Scotland boys | Will | 152 | 308th |
| France girls | Will | 5 | 5,138th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Will: rank by region
In 2025, Will was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Will | 255 | 23 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Will appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (139th) and Province of East Flanders (198th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Will among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Will | 14 | 17 |
| Finland girls | Will | 5 | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Will against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.