Wilford
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A placename:
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈwɪɫfɝd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wilford is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- CACanada
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A placename:
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Wilford is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Wilford (Nottinghamshire or Suffolk); first attested Roger de Witteford 1199–1200 FFSf
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; "the ford in the willows"
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)
- Wilford Woodruffb. 1807USPresident of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1807-1898)
- Jesse W. Renob. 1861USnot in their usual nameAmerican inventor (1861–1947)
- Wilford Bacon Hoggattb. 1865USAmerican naval officer and sixth Governor of the District of Alaska (1865-1938)
- James Wilford Garnerb. 1871USAmerican professor of political science (1871-1938)
- Alma Richardsb. 1890USnot in their usual nameAmerican Olympic high jump gold medalist athlete, soldier, lawyer and teacher (1890–1963)
- Little Brother Montgomeryb. 1906USnot in their usual nameAmerican jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer (1906–1985)
- Wilford R. Gardnerb. 1925USAmerican soil scientist (1925–2011)
- Wilford Leachb. 1929USAmerican film director (1929–1988)
- Wilford Brimleyb. 1934USAmerican actor and singer (1934–2020)
- W. Val Ovesonb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician
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 35 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,279 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.7K | #11,316 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #11,003 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.8K | #4,037 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 18 | #44,883 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 15 | #97,717 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 10 | #70,550 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #243,580 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Wilford mean, and where does it come from?
- A placename: Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Wilford?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɪɫfɝd/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Wilford a male or female name?
- Wilford 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 Wilford have the most bearers?
- Wilford is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Wilford?
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/wilfordThe 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, “Wilford”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.