Willard

At the 2020 census, 20,179 Americans bore the surname Willard — 1,733rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 14,800.

By the numbers

People: 20,179
Rank: 1,733rd
How common: 1 in 14,800
Per 100,000: 6.8

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From Old English wil (“will”) + heard (“brave, strong”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.1%
Black, not Hispanic 4.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 2.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Willard

Fred Willard (1933–2020)American actor and comedian
Frances Willard (1839–1898)American temperance activist and suffragist
Emma Willard (1787–1870)American educator and women's rights activist, 1787-1870
Jess Willard (1881–1968)American boxer
Atom Willard (born 1973)American drummer
Patsy Willard (born 1941)former American Olympic diver
John Willard (1885–1942)American playwright

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

Surnames like Willard

Also a first name

Willard has been given to 78,542 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1915. 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.