William
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the male personal name William, introduced by the Normans and ultimately Germanic, literally ‘will-helmet’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/wɪliəm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
William is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 4th most common given name.
- CNChina≈1 in 101(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 107
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 111
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)
- #27 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 704 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 101 (inferred from the name graph)
≈14,000,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the male personal name William, introduced by the Normans and ultimately Germanic, literally ‘will-helmet’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
William 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 | — | ≈14,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 101 | — | William | 116 |
| US United States | #8 | 2,240,114 | 1 in 148 | 2.2M | William | 704 |
| GB United Kingdom | #10 | ≈590,000 est. | ≈1 in 111 | 1.5K | William | 455 |
| EG Egypt | #129 | ≈350,000 est. | ≈1 in 294 | — | William | 94 |
| IT Italy | #23 | ≈330,000 est. | ≈1 in 188 | 1 | William | 179 |
| CA Canada | #8 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 134 | 148 | William | 381 |
| SG Singapore | #4 | ≈48,000 est. | ≈1 in 129 | — | William | 170 |
| NZ New Zealand | #7 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 107 | — | William | 183 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend). 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)
William is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Germanic ‘will helmet’; widely used by the Normans in medieval Ireland and still popular.
as a nameIrish first names
In French, English form of Wilhelm, from Germanic wil ‘will’ + helm ‘protection’.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, from Norman French Guillaume, from Old Germanic Willihelm; first attested Robertus filius Willelmi 1086 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; "a strong resolute protector"
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter W.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- William II of Englandb. 1060GBKing of England from 1087 to 1100
- William Henry Harrisonb. 1773USpresident of the United States in 1841 (1773-1841)
- Wilhelm Steinitzb. 1836USnot in their usual nameAustrian-American chess player (1836–1900)
- Francis William Astonb. 1877GBBritish chemist (1877-1945)
- Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucesterb. 1900GBnot in their usual nameBritish soldier (1900–1974), Governor-General of Australia from 1945 to 1947
- Bill Clintonb. 1946USnot in their usual namePresident of the United States from 1993 to 2001 (born 1946)
- William Hurtb. 1950USAmerican actor (1950–2022)
- Kiefer Sutherlandb. 1966GBnot in their usual nameBritish-Canadian actor (born 1966)
- Bill Goldbergb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and football player (born 1966)
- Joe Lockeb. 2003IMnot in their usual nameManx actor
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 180 sources across 100 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2M | #6 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 11K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2K | #6 |
| GB United Kingdom | ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) | 2024 | 1.5K | #27 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 1.4K | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 148 | #6 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2004 | 5 | — |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 are other forms of the name William?
- In the etymology graph, Guillermo, Billy and Guilherme are forms of the same name in other languages; Bill and Will are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name William mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name William, introduced by the Normans and ultimately Germanic, literally ‘will-helmet’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is William a male or female name?
- William is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does William have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 14 million people named William in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled william.
- How common is the name William?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,240,114 people named William in 2020, about 1 in 148 residents.
- How common is William compared with other names?
- In Singapore, William is the 4th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce William?
- A machine transcription gives /wɪliəm/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about William?
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/williamThe 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, “William” — the 4th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.