Willem
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymic to Wilhelm; compositional -helm reduced
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʋɪləm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Willem is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- BEBelgium1 in 7.9K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 205as Williams
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.9Kas Williamson
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Willem itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #766 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 565 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.9K (inferred from the name graph)
1,625,252 named Williams, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Williamson in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 1 more.
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)
Patronymic to Wilhelm; compositional -helm reduced. 476 bearers.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Willem 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 | #232 | 1,625,252as Williams | 1 in 205 | 2.2M | Williamson | 565 |
| CN China | — | ≈570,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Williamson | 56 |
| GB United Kingdom | #144 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 37K | Williamson | 324 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | listed | Willem | 186 |
| CA Canada | #209 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 148 | Williamson | 225 |
| GY Guyana | — | 11,432as Williams | 1 in 66 | 11K | — | 4 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 3,579as Williams | 1 in 28 | 3.6K | — | 1 |
| GD Grenada | — | 2,015as Williams | 1 in 56 | 2K | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | 1,486 | 1 in 7.9K | 1.5K | Willem | 131 |
1,625,252 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling williams. 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Willem 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 Dutch, a male given name from Proto-Germanic, equivalent to English William
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Se Vilhelm.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, Patronym zu Wilhelm: willo/wille 'Wille' + helm 'Helm'; niederländisch/belgische Kurz- und Verschleifungsform, 11 Types/3342 Tokens; Muster: Kürzung mit -em/-se(n).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In French, Variante néerlandaise de Guillaume; du germ. will + helm, « volonté/protection ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In German, Aus dem Rufnamen Wilhelm; niederdeutsch/niederländische Form mit gelöster Kompositionsfuge. Bearer count: 3342.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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)
- Willem de Zwijgerb. 1533DEDutch statesman and revolt leader (1533-1584)
- Willem Barentsb. 1550NLDutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer (1550–1597)
- William II, Prince of Orangeb. 1626NLnot in their usual nameprince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland (1626–1650)
- William III of Englandb. 1650NLnot in their usual nameKing of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689 to 1702 (1650-1702)
- William I of the Netherlandsb. 1772NLnot in their usual nameKing of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg 1815-1840 (1772-1843)
- William II of the Netherlandsb. 1792NLnot in their usual nameKing of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1840 to 1849 (1792-1849)
- William III of the Netherlandsb. 1817NLnot in their usual nameKing of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg (1817-1890)
- Vincent van Goghb. 1853NLnot in their usual nameDutch painter (1853–1890)
- Wim Kokb. 1938NLnot in their usual nameDutch politician (1938–2018)
- William Alexander of the Netherlandsb. 1967NLnot in their usual nameKing of the Netherlands (born 1967)
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 81 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.3K | #5,291 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1.5K | #770 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 1.4K | #770 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 257 | #70,906 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 242 | #78,821 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 237 | #85,054 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 51 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 19 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6 | #5,291 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2023 | 4 | #836 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #149 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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
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
- Where does the name Willem come from?
- Patronymic to Wilhelm; compositional -helm reduced. 476 bearers. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen.
- How do you pronounce Willem?
- A machine transcription gives /ʋɪləm/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- What are other forms of the name Willem?
- In the etymology graph, William, Guillermo and Willie are forms of the same name in other languages; Willy, Wim and Pim are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Willem a male or female name?
- Willem 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.
- What does the name Willem mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymic to Wilhelm; compositional -helm reduced.
- In which country does Willem have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.6 million people named Williams, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Willem most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Willem is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 7.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Willem?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 1,486 people named Willem in 2008, about 1 in 7.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Willem compared with other names?
- In the United States, Willem is the 232nd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Willem?
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/willemThe 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, “Willem” — the 232nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.