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
/ˈwɪɫks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wilks is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 18Kas Wilkes(measured from records)
- GDGrenada1 in 38K
- NONorway1 in 88K
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. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 424 (measured from records)
- 1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)
18,314 named Wilkes, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(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 in the world
(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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 18,314as Wilkes | 1 in 18K | 18K | Wilkes | 424 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | 13K | Wilks | 203 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 1 | Wilkes | 146 |
| IN India | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 1M | 1 | — | 15 |
| BR Brazil | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 438K | 94 | — | 3 |
| EE Estonia | ≈91 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | — | 1 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 73as Wilkes | 1 in 737 | 73 | — | 5 |
| NO Norway | 62 | 1 in 88K | 62 | — | 4 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | 23as Wilkes | 1 in 4.4K | 23 | — | 1 |
| GD Grenada | 3 | 1 in 38K | 3 | — | 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); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); 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)- Robert Wilksb. 1665GBBritish actor (1665-1732)
- Samuel Wilksb. 1824GBBritish doctor (1824–1911)
- Maurice Wilksb. 1904GBBritish automobile designer
- Ivor Wilksb. 1928GBBritish academic (1928–2014)
- Yorick Wilksb. 1939GBBritish computer scientist (1939-2023)
- Lars Vilksb. 1946SEnot in their usual nameSwedish artist (1946–2021)
- Eileen Wilksb. 1952USAmerica writer
- James Wilksb. 1978GBEnglish martial artist
- Mike Wilksb. 1979USAmerican basketball player (born 1979)
- Mallik Wilksb. 1998GBEnglish association football player (born 1998)
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)Evidence
(measured from records)27 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9K | #3,962 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.8K | #3,936 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.7K | #3,749 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 6K | #1,319 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 62 | #22,396 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 3 | #179 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 3 | #220 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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 Wilks mean, and where does it come from?
- A surname originating as a patronymic. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Wilks?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɪɫks/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wilks have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Wilkes, more than in any other country we hold.
- 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?
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/wilksThe 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.