Wilks

surname · Latin script

Meaning: A surname originating as a patronymic

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: St Kitts & Nevis, 2026

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Wilks is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • GDGrenada1 in 38K(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 88K
  • KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 737as Wilkes

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 Wilks itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

18,314 named Wilkes, 2010

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
424 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)

Grenada

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)
WilkesLatin(measured from records)
וילקסHebrew(measured from records)
УилксCyrillic(measured from records)

Locally spelled Wilkes in US United States, CA Canada.

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)

A surname originating as a patronymic.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Wilks is found

(measured from records)

Wilks 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 Wilks is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States18,314as Wilkes1 in 18K18KWilkes424
GB United Kingdom≈8,200 est.≈1 in 8.4K13KWilks203
CA Canada≈2,000 est.≈1 in 21K1Wilkes146
IN India≈1,500 est.≈1 in 989K1—15
NL Netherlands360as Wilkes1 in 48K360—34
KN St. Kitts & Nevis73as Wilkes1 in 73773—5
NO Norway621 in 88K62—4
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines23as Wilkes1 in 4.4K23—1
GD Grenada31 in 38K3—2

18,314 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls). 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)

Wilks is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, starker patronymischer Genitiv zu Wilhelm; 118 Belege.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen

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)
1920194019601980Yorick Wilks, b. 1939Lars Vilks, b. 1946Mike Wilks, b. 1979
  • Yorick Wilksb. 1939GBBritish computer scientist (1939-2023)
  • Lars Vilksb. 1946SEnot in their usual nameSwedish artist (1946–2021)
  • Mike Wilksb. 1979USAmerican basketball player (born 1979)

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)
FormalDear Wilks,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

27 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Wilks mean, and where does it come from?
A surname originating as a patronymic. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Wilks?
In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Wilkes, more than in any other country we hold. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, India and Netherlands; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Wilks most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wilks is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 38 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Wilks?
In Norway, the national register counted 62 people named Wilks, about 1 in 88 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Wilks?

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

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, “Wilks”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Wilks parses inside a full name →