Humanverse

Williams

About 6,150 American babies have been named Williams since 1880, most of them around 1950. In 2025 it ranked 3,036th. About 3,700 Williamses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 38.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Williams boys named Williams

By the numbers

Total US births
6,150
Estimated living today
3,700
Median age today
38
Peak year
1950
Best rank
741st
Rank in 2025
3,036th
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
24 / 6,126

How old the living Williamses are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 6,150 babies given the name since 1880, about 3,700 are alive — 59 in every hundred. Roughly 820 of them are children and 790 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1987 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.

Notable Williamss

People named Williams with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Williams is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Williams is most concentrated in Mississippi (12.3×), Georgia (4.5×), Alabama (4.4×), Louisiana (2.5×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1950

The most popular boys’ names the year Williams peaked:

All the names of 1950

Williams elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France boys Williams +1 spelling 2,855 240th
England and Wales boys Williams 39 3,256th
Belgium boys Williams 6 1,232nd

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.

Williams 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
Finland boys Williams 9 21
Finland girls Williams 5

A count of people on a register – 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.

Where Williams lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 295 men called Williams were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Province Spelling People Per thousand Place there
Santa Cruz de Tenerife Williams 40 0.075 1,147
Palmas, Las Williams 23 0.040 1,908
Lleida Williams 6 0.025 2,057
Balears, Illes Williams 13 0.021 2,520
Madrid Williams 56 0.016 2,690
Valencia/València Williams 17 0.013 3,391

Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

Williams against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Williams with a name of your own

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.