Wilson
Wilson is a boy's name that peaked in 1918, when it was the 122nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 672nd. About 27,000 Wilsons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 31.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wilson boys named Wilson
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 49,017
- Estimated living today
- 27,000
- Median age today
- 31
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 122nd
- Rank in 2025
- 672nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 210 / 48,807
How old the living Wilsons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 49,017 babies given the name since 1880, about 27,000 are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 7,600 of them are children and 5,000 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 a surname
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wilsons
- Wilson Palacios (born 1984)Honduran footballer
- Wilson Pickett (1941–2006)American male singer and songwriter
- Wilson Kipketer (born 1972)Kenyan and Danish middle distance runner
- Wilson Oruma (born 1976)Nigerian and French footballer
- Wilson Isidor (born 2000)Haitian-French association football player
- Wilson da Silva Piazza (born 1943)Brazilian footballer
- Wilson Rodrigues Fonseca (born 1985)Brazilian association football player
- Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich (born 1982)Kenyan long distance runner
People named Wilson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wilson is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wilson is most concentrated in Louisiana (3.4×), South Carolina (3.0×), Mississippi (2.5×), Alabama (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular boys’ names the year Wilson peaked:
Wilson elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Wilson | 2,870 | 510th |
| England and Wales boys | Wilson | 908 | 568th |
| Scotland boys | Wilson | 105 | 386th |
| Belgium boys | Wilson | 78 | 1,044th |
| Ireland boys | Wilson | 11 | 439th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Wilson | 7 | 358th |
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.
Wilson: rank by region
In 2010, Wilson was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Wilson | 767 | 6 |
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.
Wilson 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 | Wilson | 29 | 66 |
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.
Where Wilson lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,661 men called Wilson 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Wilson | 81 | 0.130 | 592 |
| Madrid | Wilson | 395 | 0.116 | 542 |
| Bizkaia | Wilson | 60 | 0.106 | 651 |
| Araba/Álava | Wilson | 17 | 0.101 | 697 |
| Rioja, La | Wilson | 15 | 0.093 | 705 |
| Barcelona | Wilson | 254 | 0.087 | 745 |
Listed in 44 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 8 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
Wilson 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.