William

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named William boys named William

By the numbers

Total US births

4,215,725

Estimated living today

2.2 million

Median age today

55

Peak year

1947

Best rank

4th

Rank in 2025

9th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

16,029 / 4,199,696

How old the living Williams are

born that year still alive today

Of the 4,215,725 babies given the name since 1880, about 2.2 million are alive — 52 in every hundred. Roughly 263,000 of them are children and 755,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1970 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

From Middle English William, from Anglo-Norman Willame, from Old High German Willahelm, from Proto-Germanic *Wiljahelmaz (> Latin Gulielmus), from Proto-Germanic *wiljô (“will”) + *helmaz (“helmet”), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European roots *welh₁- (“to choose, wish, want”) and *ḱel- (“to cover, conceal, save”) respectively.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Williams

• William Shakespeare (1564–1616)English playwright and poet
• William Blake (1757–1827)English poet and artist
• William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)Irish poet and playwright
• William Faulkner (1897–1962)American writer
• William Howard Taft (1857–1930)27th President of the United States from 1909 to 1913
• William McKinley (1843–1901)president of the United States from 1897 to 1901
• William Wordsworth (1770–1850)English Romantic poet
• William Henry Harrison (1773–1841)president of the United States in 1841

People named William with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where William is most common

• NY326,619
• PA304,742
• CA221,789
• OH207,065
• IL201,720
• TX186,353
• NC162,552
• MI143,961
• GA138,545
• NJ134,177

Relative to how many babies each state records, William is most concentrated in Delaware (1.7×), the District of Columbia (1.6×), Kentucky (1.5×), West Virginia (1.5×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1947

The most popular boys’ names the year William peaked:

• James
• Robert
• John
• William
• Richard
• David

All the names of 1947

William elsewhere

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.

William: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, William is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.28% of children were given it – 283 of them.

William: rank by region

In 2025, William was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2013, William was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, William was given 2 times or more in 9 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, William appears in the lists for Province of Walloon Brabant (18th), Province of Namur (23rd), Brussels-Capital Region (37th), Province of Liège (42nd), Province of Luxembourg (46th), Province of Flemish Brabant (49th), Province of Hainaut (56th), Province of East Flanders (86th), Province of West Flanders (95th) and Province of Antwerp (106th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.

William by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

William 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.

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.

Where William lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,928 men called William were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 46 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 6 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Willie
• Wilma
• Willard
• Willow
• Wilbur
• Willis
• Wilson
• Will
• Wilbert
• Willa
• Wilfred
• Wiley

William against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• William vs Willie
• William vs Wilma
• William vs Willard
• William vs Willow
• William vs Wilbur
• William vs Willis

Compare William with a name of your own