Willett
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Willett is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: A surname originating as a patronymic.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 18K
- CACanada≈1 in 24K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 406 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
13,065 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Willett 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 | 13,065 | 1 in 25K | 13K | Willett | 406 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 4.5K | Willett | 168 |
| EG Egypt | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | Willett | 4 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Willett | 120 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Willett | 131 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Willett | 26 |
| IE Ireland | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Willett | 16 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 40 | 1 in 1.3K | 40 | — | 5 |
| IS Iceland | ≈26 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Willett | 2 |
13,065 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); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Willett 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 English, From a pet-form of Will (i).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Thomas Willettb. 1605USMayor of New York City
- Marinus Willettb. 1740USAmerican mayor
- William Willettb. 1856GBproponent of British Summer Time (1856–1915)
- John Willettb. 1917GBBritish translator (1917-2002)
- Hazel Adairb. 1920GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress, and screenwriter of television and radio (1920-2015)
- Walter C. Willettb. 1945USAmerican nutritionist
- Peter Willettb. 1953GBBritish chemoinformatics researcher
- Chad Willettb. 1971CACanadian actor
- Danny Willettb. 1987GBEnglish professional golfer
- Michael J. Willettb. 1989USAmerican actor
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 23 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,761 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,613 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,849 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4.5K | #1,794 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 40 | #142 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- What does the name Willett mean, and where does it come from?
- A surname originating as a patronymic. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Willett have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Willett, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled willett.
- Where is Willett most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Willett is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Willett?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,065 people named Willett in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Willett?
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/willettThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Willett”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.