Wilson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 'son of Will', i.e. William; first attested Robert WUleson 1324
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/wɪlsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wilson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Australia it is the 7th most common surname.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 304(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 311
- AUAustralia≈1 in 347
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #85 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 664 (measured from records)
- 1 in 217 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,400,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
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)
'son of Will', i.e. William; first attested Robert WUleson 1324
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wilson 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 407 | — | Wilson | 63 |
| US United States | #11 | 801,882 | 1 in 415 | 802K | Wilson | 664 |
| GB United Kingdom | #9 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 311 | 3.8K | Wilson | 388 |
| CA Canada | #8 | ≈93,000 est. | ≈1 in 407 | 5 | Wilson | 321 |
| EG Egypt | #430 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Wilson | 61 |
| AU Australia | #7 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 347 | 1 | Wilson | 336 |
| NZ New Zealand | #7 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 304 | — | Wilson | 196 |
| GY Guyana | — | 3,454 | 1 in 217 | 3.5K | — | 18 |
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); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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)
Wilson is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, English patronymic surname meaning ‘son of Will(iam)’.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, From the father’s name William/Willie; Wulson noted from 1405. In the north, some may descend from William Gunn’s 15th-century clan branch.
as a nameScottish Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a patronymic from Will. Use as a given name in the United States was inspired by President (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson 251 (1856-1924); cf. the similar adoption as a given name of Woodrow. Short form of ) Winifred.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, An English, Scottish and northern Irish surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son 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)
- Woodrow Wilsonb. 1856USpresident of the United States from 1913 to 1921 (1856–1924)
- Charles Thomson Rees Wilsonb. 1869GBScottish physicist and meteorologist (1869-1959)
- Michael Wilsonb. 1914USAmerican screenwriter (1914-1978)
- Harold Wilsonb. 1916GBPrime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964-1970 and 1974-1976 (1916–1995)
- Edward Osborne Wilsonb. 1929USAmerican biologist, naturalist, and writer (1929–2021)
- Robert Woodrow Wilsonb. 1936USAmerican astronomer (born 1936)
- Owen Wilsonb. 1968USAmerican actor (born 1968)
- Chandra Wilsonb. 1969USAmerican actress and director
- Ryan Giggsb. 1973GBnot in their usual nameWelsh association football player and coach
- Patrick Wilsonb. 1973USAmerican 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 140 sources across 74 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 802K | #14 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 783K | #10 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 777K | #14 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 3.5K | #12 |
Reference works 9
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Wilson mean, and where does it come from?
- 'son of Will', i.e. William; first attested Robert WUleson 1324 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Wilson?
- A machine transcription gives /wɪlsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wilson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.4 million people named Wilson in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wilson.
- Where is Wilson most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wilson is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 217 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wilson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 801,882 people named Wilson in 2010, about 1 in 415 residents.
- How common is Wilson compared with other names?
- In Australia, Wilson is the 7th most common surname of 552,428 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wilson?
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/wilsonThe 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, “Wilson” — the 7th most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.