Wilkens

At the 2020 census, 3,507 Americans bore the surname Wilkens — 8,956th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 85,200.

By the numbers

People: 3,507
Rank: 8,956th
How common: 1 in 85,200
Per 100,000: 1.2

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

Variant of Wilkin, from a Middle English pet form of William + patronymic suffix -s.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.3%
Black, not Hispanic 8.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Wilkens

Lenny Wilkens (1937–2025)American basketball player and coach
Leo Wilkens (1893–1967)Swedish coxswain

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

Surnames like Wilkens

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.