Wilfred
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Old English Wilfrīð ‘will-peace’; first attested Wilfrei miles 1055 FeuDu
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/wɪlfɹəd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wilfred is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 4.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 6K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 7.3K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 377 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Old English Wilfrīð ‘will-peace’; first attested Wilfrei miles 1055 FeuDu
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wilfred 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Wilfred | 73 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Wilfred | 25 |
| US United States | — | 11,337 | 1 in 29K | 11K | Wilfred | 377 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Wilfred | 87 |
| ZA South Africa | #890 | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 6K | — | Wilfred | 54 |
| NL Netherlands | #635 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | 1.5K | Wilfred | 79 |
| LA Laos | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Wilfred | 3 |
| GY Guyana | — | 404 | 1 in 1.9K | 404 | — | 3 |
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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 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)
Wilfred 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 male given name from Old English, popular in the U.K. in the early twentieth century.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Old English; "desirous of peace"
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, ) Wilfrid: männl. Vom., Neben formen von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Wilfred Lucasb. 1871CAactor, Film director (1871–1940)
- Wilfred Owenb. 1893GBEnglish poet and soldier (1893-1918)
- Wilfred Bionb. 1897GBBritish psychoanalyst & psychiatrist (1897–1979)
- Wilfred Jacksonb. 1906USAmerican film director (1906–1988)
- Wilfred Thesigerb. 1910GBBritish explorer, military officer, writer and botanical collector (1910-2003)
- Wilfrid Sellarsb. 1912USnot in their usual nameAmerican philosopher (1912-1989)
- Wilfred Cantwell Smithb. 1916CACanadian academic (1916–2000)
- Lionel W. McKenzieb. 1919USnot in their usual nameAmerican economist (1919–2010)
- Stefano Denswilb. 1993NLnot in their usual nameSurinamese footballer
- Wilfred Ndidib. 1996NGNigerian association football player
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 85 sources across 48 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 11K | #2,282 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1.5K | #1,615 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 404 | #245 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 29 | #2,282 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 29 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 6 | #38,231 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1956 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- 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
- 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
- In which country does Wilfred have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Wilfred in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wilfred.
- Where is Wilfred most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wilfred is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 1.9 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Wilfred mean, and where does it come from?
- from Old English Wilfrīð ‘will-peace’; first attested Wilfrei miles 1055 FeuDu Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Wilfred a male or female name?
- Wilfred 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 are other forms of the name Wilfred?
- In the etymology graph, Wilfredo, Wilfried and Wilfrid are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Wilfred?
- A machine transcription gives /wɪlfɹəd/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Wilfred?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,337 people named Wilfred in 2020, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
- How common is Wilfred compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Wilfred is the 635th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wilfred?
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/wilfredThe 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, “Wilfred” — the 635th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.