Will

At the 2020 census, 12,037 Americans bore the surname Will — 2,918th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 24,800.

By the numbers

People: 12,037
Rank: 2,918th
How common: 1 in 24,800
Per 100,000: 4.0

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

or Willow, less often, other given names beginning with Wil-, such as Wilfred or Willard.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 88.1%
Black, not Hispanic 4.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.1%
Hispanic or Latino 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Will

George Will (born 1941)American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author
K.Will (born 1981)South Korean singer
Brad Will (1970–2006)American activist
Bob Will (1925–2019)American rower
Roman Will (born 1992)Czech ice hockey goaltender

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

Surnames like Will

Also a first name

Will has been given to 46,610 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1888. 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.