Liam
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Liam is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 83rd most common given name. In English, recorded as A male given name from Irish, currently popular in Ireland, England, Scotland, and the United States.
- SESweden1 in 504(measured from records)
- IEIreland≈1 in 804
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.1K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 491 (measured from records)
- 1 in 485 (inferred from the name graph)
218,131 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Liam is read(measured from records)
Liam is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English66%
A male given name from Irish, currently popular in Ireland, England, Scotland, and the United States.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French12%
Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Forme irlandaise de Guillaume; origine germanique, « volonté » et « protection ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- Spanish10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Liam in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Liam 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 218,131 | 1 in 1.5K | 217K | Liam | 491 |
| GB United Kingdom | #193 | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 6 | Liam | 354 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 34,868 | 1 in 485 | 35K | — | 12 |
| AU Australia | #217 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Liam | 261 |
| SE Sweden | #432 | 20,262 | 1 in 504 | 20K | Liam | 86 |
| IE Ireland | #83 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 804 | — | Liam | 165 |
| NO Norway | — | 5,516 | 1 in 991 | 19K | Liam | 51 |
218,131 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INEC — civil registry names; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Liam is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, Irish form of William; also used in Irish for the will o’ the wisp as Liam na Lasoige.
as a nameIrish first names
Irish: short form of Uilliam , Gaelic form of WILLIAM .
as a word
In Irish, a male given name from English, equivalent to English Bill or Will
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)
- Liam Cunninghamb. 1961IEIrish actor
- Liam O'Brienb. 1976USAmerican voice actor, writer, and director
- Liam Garriganb. 1981GBEnglish actor
- Liam Roseniorb. 1984GBEnglish footballer and manager (born 1984)
- Liam Hemsworthb. 1990AUAustralian actor (born 1990)
- Liam Aikenb. 1990USAmerican actor (born 1990)
- Liam Payneb. 1993GBEnglish singer and songwriter (1993–2024)
- Liam Jamesb. 1996CACanadian actor
- Liam Lawsonb. 2002NZNew Zealand motor racing driver
- Liam Delapb. 2003GBEnglish association football player (born 2003)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 148 sources across 79 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 217K | #257 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 35K | #66 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 21K | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 20K | #212 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 19K | #249 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 14K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 5.5K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 4.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 700 | #257 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 46 | #12,605 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Is Liam a male or female name?
- Liam 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.
- Where does the name Liam come from?
- Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Liam have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 218 thousand people named Liam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled liam.
- Where is Liam most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Liam is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 485 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Liam?
- In the United States, the national register counted 218,131 people named Liam in 2020, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Liam compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Liam is the 83rd most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Liam?
- In the etymology graph, William, Guillermo and Willie are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Liam mean?
- In English, A male given name from Irish, currently popular in Ireland, England, Scotland, and the United States.
What do you want to know about Liam?
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/liamThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Liam” — the 83rd most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.