Hill
loc · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Hill is a name, most frequently recorded in Canada. In Denmark it is the 30th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Urdu, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) person living on or near a hill; (ii) from the medieval personal name Hill, short for Hilary, Hildebrand or Hilliard; (iii) from a Low German shortened form of Hildebrand.
- MWMalawi1 in 154◐
- DKDenmark1 in 179
- MUMauritius1 in 338
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈38K ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 544 ●
- 1 in 179 ◐
across 9 countries
recorded for this name
4.2M records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Helle in DK Denmark, NO Norway, EE Estonia and 4 more and ทะเล in TH Thailand.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
(i) person living on or near a hill; (ii) from the medieval personal name Hill, short for Hilary, Hildebrand or Hilliard; (iii) from a Low German shortened form of Hildebrand
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA Canada | — | 513,202 | 69K rec. | — | 1 | Hill | 226 |
| AU Australia | — | 78,973 | 104K rec. | — | 1 | Hill | 256 |
| DK Denmark | #30 | 32,720△ | 12K rec. | 1 in 179 | 33K | Helle | 171 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 28,988 | 257K rec. | — | listed | Hill | 267 |
| PK Pakistan | — | 14,845 | 4.4K rec. | — | — | Hill | 13 |
| IN India | — | 6,910 | 3.2K rec. | — | 42 | Hill | 68 |
| MA Morocco | — | 4,453 | 1.6K rec. | — | — | Hill | 18 |
| TH Thailand | — | 3,626 | 1.1K rec. | — | #242,054 | ทะเล | 84 |
| NO Norway | #351 | 3,099 | 2.8K rec. | 1 in 1.8K | 11K | Helle | 58 |
| MU Mauritius | — | 1,700 | 36 rec. | — | — | Hill | 8 |
| MW Malawi | — | 1,531 | 6 rec. | — | — | Hill | 5 |
| TN Tunisia | — | 802 | 1.5K rec. | — | — | Hill | 13 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English7.7M68%
- Urdu15K1%
- Hindi6.9K1%
- Arabic5.4K1%
- French (New Caledonia)4K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 7,703,184 | 68% |
| Urdu | 14,845 | 1% |
| Hindi | 6,884 | 1% |
| Arabic | 5,409 | 1% |
| French (New Caledonia) | 4,041 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Hill 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.
Name in the US, translation from the German term Berg.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, dweller on the hill, from Old English hyll; first attested Gilbert del Hil 1191 P (Norfolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, ngtyé; top of a hill, ngandangé;_ hilly country, nginé, lolo
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
from the medieval personal name Hill, a short form of Hilary (see Hillary) or of a Germanic (male or female) compound name with the first element hild ‘strife’, ‘battle’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
English translation of Finnish Maki (‘hill’), or of any of various other names formed with this element, such as Makinen, Heinamaki, Kivimaki.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1884 | 6 |
| 1892 | 5 |
| 1893 | 5 |
| 1894 | 7 |
| 1899 | 5 |
| 1905 | 11 |
| 1907 | 5 |
| 1911 | 10 |
| 1912 | 8 |
| 1913 | 9 |
| 1914 | 10 |
| 1915 | 13 |
| 1916 | 10 |
| 1917 | 14 |
| 1918 | 8 |
| 1919 | 21 |
| 1920 | 14 |
| 1921 | 14 |
| 1922 | 15 |
| 1923 | 11 |
| 1924 | 15 |
| 1925 | 16 |
| 1926 | 5 |
| 1927 | 11 |
| 1928 | 6 |
| 1929 | 12 |
| 1930 | 10 |
| 1931 | 9 |
| 1932 | 8 |
| 1933 | 10 |
| 1934 | 11 |
| 1935 | 6 |
| 1936 | 10 |
| 1939 | 10 |
| 1941 | 6 |
| 1942 | 9 |
| 1943 | 6 |
| 1944 | 6 |
| 1945 | 8 |
| 1946 | 5 |
| 1947 | 11 |
| 1948 | 6 |
| 1951 | 7 |
| 1952 | 5 |
| 1953 | 6 |
| 1955 | 5 |
| 1956 | 8 |
| 1958 | 7 |
| 1959 | 6 |
| 1960 | 5 |
| 1964 | 6 |
| 1974 | 5 |
| 1982 | 5 |
| 1989 | 6 |
| 1996 | 7 |
| 1997 | 6 |
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2006 | 5 |
| 2008 | 8 |
| 2009 | 10 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2014 | 8 |
| 2016 | 5 |
| 2017 | 10 |
| 2018 | 8 |
| 2022 | 6 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | 6 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 70 years between 1884–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Hannah Chaplinb. 1865GBnot in their usual nameEnglish stage and musical actress (1866–1928)
- Napoleon Hillb. 1883USAmerican author (1883-1970)
- Archibald Hillb. 1886GBEnglish physiologist and biophysicist (1886-1977)
- George Roy Hillb. 1921USAmerican film director (1921–2002)
- Damon Hillb. 1960GBBritish racing driver
- Joss Whedonb. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican director, screenwriter, and producer (born 1964)
- Conleth Hillb. 1964GBIrish actor
- Jonah Hillb. 1983USAmerican actor (born 1983)
- Becky Hillb. 1994GBBritish singer (born 1994)
- Lil Nas Xb. 1999USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper, singer and songwriter (born 1999)
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 59 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 435K | #39 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 419K | #41 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 412K | #41 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1K | #965 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1K | #4,275 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1K | #4,274 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 501 | #6,853 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 468 | #17,454 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 350 | #4,261 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 327 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 298 | #26,560 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 290 | #4,508 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 228 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Hill?
- We estimate roughly 38 thousand people bear Hill (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Hill have the most bearers?
- Hill is most frequently recorded in Canada, where it is most often spelled hill.
- How common is Hill compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Hill is the 30th most common given name of 31,396 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Hill mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) person living on or near a hill; (ii) from the medieval personal name Hill, short for Hilary, Hildebrand or Hilliard; (iii) from a Low German shortened form of Hildebrand
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hillThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Hill” — the 30th most common given name in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.