Willis

At the 2020 census, 125,122 Americans bore the surname Willis — 242nd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 2,389.

By the numbers

People: 125,122
Rank: 242nd
How common: 1 in 2,389
Per 100,000: 41.9

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Willis described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 59.6%
Black, not Hispanic 30.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Willis

Rumer Willis (born 1988)American actress
Thomas Willis (1621–1675)English physician
Connie Willis (born 1945)American science fiction writer
Nick Willis (born 1983)New Zealand middle-distance runner
Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867)American magazine writer, editor, and publisher
Ellen Willis (1941–2006)American writer
Victor Willis (1951–2026)American singer
Kevin Willis (born 1962)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Willis

Also a first name

Willis has been given to 53,154 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1924. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.