Wiley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Willey, Wylye, or Wyly; first attested John de Wili, de Wylegh 1201 P (W)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/waɪli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wiley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 6.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 6.8K
- CACanada≈1 in 8.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 503 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Willey, Wylye, or Wyly; first attested John de Wili, de Wylegh 1201 P (W)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Wiley, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wiley counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Wiley | 13 |
| US United States | #576 | 48,720 | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | Wiley | 503 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Wiley | 4 |
| GH Ghana | #337 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Wiley | 12 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 1.4K | Wiley | 144 |
| CA Canada | #861 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | 2 | Wiley | 137 |
| SG Singapore | #473 | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Wiley | 12 |
| IE Ireland | #786 | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Wiley | 44 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Wiley is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Old English; "wily, beguiling"
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Harvey Washington Wileyb. 1844USAmerican chemist (1844–1930)
- Alexander Wileyb. 1884USAmerican politician (1884–1967)
- Mildred Wileyb. 1901USAmerican high jumper (1901-2000)
- Geeshie Wileyb. 1908USAfrican-American woman musician
- Don Craig Wileyb. 1944USAmerican immunologist
- Genieb. 1957USnot in their usual nameabused child studied by linguists after spending most of early life locked in a room and tied to a chair
- Gareth Wileyb. 1962English film producer
- Kehinde Wileyb. 1977USAfrican-American painter (born 1977)
- Samira Wileyb. 1987USAmerican actor and model
- Caleb Wileyb. 2004USAmerican soccer player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 36 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 49K | #713 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 48K | #653 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 47K | #716 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.4K | #5,101 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wiley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Willey, Wylye, or Wyly; first attested John de Wili, de Wylegh 1201 P (W) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Wiley?
- A machine transcription gives /waɪli/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wiley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 162 thousand people named Wiley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wiley.
- How common is the name Wiley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 48,720 people named Wiley in 2010, about 1 in 6.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Wiley compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Wiley is the 337th most common surname of 36,883 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wiley?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wileyThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Wiley” — the 337th most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.