Wilfred
The boy's name Wilfred has been in the national records since 1880, with 29,520 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 3,757th. About 8,600 Wilfreds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wilfred boys named Wilfred
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 29,520
- Estimated living today
- 8,600
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 176th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,757th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 103 / 29,417
How old the living Wilfreds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 29,520 babies given the name since 1880, about 8,600 are alive — 29 in every hundred. Roughly 480 of them are children and 4,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Old English
The name of two early Anglo-Saxon saints Wilfriþ, from Old English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wilfreds
- Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)English poet and soldier
- Wilfred Ndidi (born 1996)Nigerian association football player
- Wilfred Bouma (born 1978)Dutch footballer
- Wilfred Bungei (born 1980)Kenyan middle-distance runner
- Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003)British explorer, military officer, writer and botanical collector
- Wilfred Agbonavbare (1966–2015)Nigerian footballer
- Wilfred Bion (1897–1979)British psychoanalyst & psychiatrist
- Wilfred Jackson (1906–1988)American film director
People named Wilfred with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wilfred is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wilfred is most concentrated in Hawaii (8.8×), New Hampshire (7.6×), Maine (7.0×), Rhode Island (5.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular boys’ names the year Wilfred peaked:
Wilfred elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Wilfred | 5,777 | 113th |
| France boys | Wilfred | 180 | 1,146th |
| Scotland boys | Wilfred | 41 | 341st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Wilfred | 3 | 404th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Wilfred: rank by region
In 2024, Wilfred was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Wilfred | 8 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Wilfred among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Wilfred | 1,539 | 2,423 |
| Finland boys | Wilfred | 15 | 32 |
| the Netherlands girls | Wilfred | 6 | 14 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Wilfred against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.