Bill

At the 2020 census, 4,630 Americans bore the surname Bill — 6,995th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 64,600.

By the numbers

People: 4,630
Rank: 6,995th
How common: 1 in 64,600
Per 100,000: 1.6

Where the name comes from

Hypocorism of William. It is unclear how the initial W became a B; this could have been part of the medieval trend of swapping letters, similar to Dick for Rick.

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

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Bill described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 72.1%
Hispanic or Latino 7.8%
Black, not Hispanic 7.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 6.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.9%

Notable people called Bill

Buffalo Bill (1846–1917)American frontiersman and showman
Max Bill (1908–1994)Swiss architect, painter and sculptor
Tony Bill (born 1940)American actor, producer and director
Ill Bill (born 1972)American rapper and record producer
Leo Bill (born 1980)British actor
Bushwick Bill (1966–2019)Jamaican rapper
Bill (born 1984)Brazilian footballer

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

Surnames like Bill

Also a first name

Bill has been given to 161,190 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1947. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.