Gilliam

surname · Latin script

Meaning: English; variant of William, from a central French form in which W is replaced by G

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Gilliam is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 11K(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
  • CACanada≈1 in 17K

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)

≈120,000 people, est.

Sources
444 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Åland Islands, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

English; variant of William, from a central French form in which W is replaced by G.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gilliam 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.

Where Gilliam is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈120,000 est.≈1 in 12K—Gilliam4
US United States#99529,4141 in 11K29KGilliam444
GB United Kingdom—≈3,900 est.≈1 in 17K—Gilliam111
EG Egypt—≈2,800 est.≈1 in 37K—Gilliam4
CA Canada—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 17K—Gilliam59
SG Singapore—≈410 est.≈1 in 15K—Gilliam6
JM Jamaica#366≈280 est.≈1 in 10K—Gilliam1
AX Åland Islands#580≈4 est.≈1 in 5.9K—Gilliam3

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. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Gilliam is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Slovakia, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Гілліам, Гиллиам

44 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Gilliam 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 English, A surname originating as a patronymic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Different form of William.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In English, Terry, US animator, film director

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

1920194019601980Jim Gilliam, b. 1928Sam Gilliam, b. 1933Burton Gilliam, b. 1938Terry Gilliam, b. 1940Stu Gilliam, b. 1943Michelle Phillips, b. 1944Herm Gilliam, b. 1946Jude Deveraux, b. 1947Armen Gilliam, b. 1964Seth Gilliam, b. 1968

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 26 sources across 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Gilliam
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201029K#1,204
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200028K#1,141
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202028K#1,233
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Gilliam mean, and where does it come from?
English; variant of William, from a central French form in which W is replaced by G. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Gilliam have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 118 thousand people named Gilliam in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gilliam.
How common is the name Gilliam?
In the United States, the national register counted 29,414 people named Gilliam in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
How common is Gilliam compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Gilliam is the 366th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gilliam?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gilliam

The 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, “Gilliam” — the 366th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gilliam parses inside a full name →