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William
Pronounced /ˈwɪl.i.əm/
Rank in 2024
#10
Born in 2024
10,596
Peak year
1947 · #4
Origin
Germanic
Also recorded for girls:9 in 2024 (#10,292)
1880 to 2024
SteadyIts story in numbers
- In 2024, 10,596 boys were named William, about 1 in every 162.
- It peaked in 1947 with 67,001 babies, ranked #4.
- It appears in the very first year of records, 1880.
- 4,189,004 boys have been named William since 1880.
Who else has this name
Babies named William per 1,000 born in each generation, on one shared scale.
- 46.6Greatest1901–27
- 39.7Silent1928–45
- 28.6Boomers1946–64
- 18.4Gen X1965–80
- 12.4Millennials1981–96
- 9.8Gen Z1997–12
- 7.6Gen Alpha2013–24
Greatest: 779,228 babies, 46.61 per 1,000. Silent: 819,625 babies, 39.68 per 1,000. Boomers: 1,072,636 babies, 28.57 per 1,000. Gen X: 499,559 babies, 18.36 per 1,000. Millennials: 378,895 babies, 12.45 per 1,000. Gen Z: 307,319 babies, 9.79 per 1,000. Gen Alpha: 166,038 babies, 7.64 per 1,000.
Meaning and origin
From Middle English William, from Anglo-Norman Willame, from Old High German Willahelm, from Proto-Germanic *Wiljahelmaz (> Latin Gulielmus), from Proto-Germanic *wiljô (“will”) + *helmaz (“helmet”), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European roots *welh₁- (“to choose, wish, want”) and *ḱel- (“to cover, conceal, save”), respectively. Cognate with Dutch Willem, German Wilhelm, etc.; cognate borrowings outside of Germanic include Guillaume and Guillermo.
- A male given name from the Germanic languages popular since the Norman Conquest.
- Origin
- Germanic
- Say it
- /ˈwɪl.i.əm/
From Wiktionary’s entry for William, CC BY-SA 4.0.