Willem
The boy's name Willem has been in the national records since 1916, with 2,840 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 2,572nd. About 2,700 Willems are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Willem
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,840
- Estimated living today
- 2,700
- Median age today
- 19
- Peak year
- 2003
- Best rank
- 1,205th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,572nd
- First recorded
- 1916
How old the living Willems are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,840 babies given the name since 1916, about 2,700 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 30 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 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.
Notable Willems
- Willem Dafoe (born 1955)American actor
- Willem Barents (1550–1597)Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer
- Willem Einthoven (1860–1927)Dutch physiologist
- Willem Drees (1886–1988)Dutch politician
- Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist
- Willem de Sitter (1872–1934)Dutch cosmologist (*1872 – †1934)
- Willem Janszoon (1570–1630)Dutch navigator and colonial governor (c.1570–c.1630)
- Willem Schouten (1567–1625)Dutch explorer
People named Willem with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Willem is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Willem is most concentrated in California (3.2×), New York (2.7×), Michigan (2.3×), Minnesota (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2003
The most popular boys’ names the year Willem peaked:
Willem elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Willem | 1,310 | 744th |
| Belgium boys | Willem | 1,286 | 171st |
| England and Wales boys | Willem | 533 | 818th |
| Poland boys | Willem | 2 birth registrations | 736th |
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.
Willem: rank by region
In 2025, Willem was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Willem | 290 | 20 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Willem appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (226th).
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.
Willem by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 37 | 277th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Willem 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Willem | 97,388 | 224,699 |
| the Netherlands girls | Willem | 6 | 529 |
| Finland boys | Willem | 34 | 141 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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
Willem 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.