Liam

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Liam is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Arab Emirates, where it is the most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Arabic, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'.

rarermore common
  • TTTrinidad & Tobago1 in 19◐
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates1 in 21
  • KWKuwait1 in 114

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈349K ●

across 12 countries

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
432 ●

286K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 485 ◐

Ecuador

Spellings & scripts●

LiamLatin · English●703K records
ליעםHebrew · Hebrew●2.2K records
ΛίαμGreek · Greek●1 records
리암Hangul · Korean●1 records
লিয়ামBengali · Bangla●1 records

Locally spelled ליעם in FR France, IL Israel and Líam in AR Argentina.

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●

Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Liam is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AE United Arab Emirates#1360,413161 rec.——Liam58
US United States—217,431△89K rec.1 in 1.5K217KLiam432
AU Australia#125172,16573K rec.——Liam246
GB United Kingdom#209163,25987K rec.—749Liam272
TT Trinidad & Tobago#1124,87131 rec.——Liam13
CA Canada#22560,8405.4K rec.—196Liam186
FR France—46,815△20 rec.1 in 1.4K47Kליעם11
EC Ecuador#31734,868△36 rec.1 in 48535KLiam14
IE Ireland#4125,2426.6K rec.——Liam149
PE Peru#95422,739706 rec.—20KLiam27
SE Sweden#94120,262△1.7K rec.1 in 50420KLiam80
KW Kuwait#420,0045 rec.——Liam6

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English703K39%
  • Arabic382K21%
  • Spanish253K14%
  • French194K11%
  • Aymara39K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English703,06339%
Arabic382,49721%
Spanish252,64114%
French194,08111%
Aymara39,0102%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Liam is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name290K records spelled Liam15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Líam, Liám, Lìam, Lïäm, Lîäm

  • French given name210K records spelled Liam14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Lïam, Liâm, Līam, Lîam, Liãm

  • Polish given name15K records spelled Liam31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United Kingdom, Croatia, United States

    Languages: Polish, Croatian, Russian

    Also written Лиам, Ліам, Liiam, Lijam, Лиъм

  • a separate given name5.1K records spelled Liam4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland

    Also written Li︠a︡m, Līam, Líam

  • Turkish given name1.8K records spelled Liam4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, United States, Türkiye, Sweden

    Languages: Turkish, Uzbek, Azerbaijani

    Also written Liàm

57 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Liam 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.

  • In Irish, Irish form of William; also used in Irish for the will o’ the wisp as Liam na Lasoige.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In English, A male given name from Irish, currently popular in Ireland, England, Scotland, and the United States.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In French, Forme irlandaise de Guillaume; origine germanique, « volonté » et « protection ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Irish: short form of Uilliam , Gaelic form of WILLIAM .

    as a word

  • In Irish, a male given name from English, equivalent to English Bill or Will

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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●

010K20K30K196019802000202022K · 2024

Show as table
Liam in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1947–2025
Yearrecords
19475
195010
19548
195512
195618
195728
195824
195917
196024
196127
196224
196343
196438
196536
196647
196760
196854
196947
197049
197160
197263
197361
197472
197582
197670
197797
1978112
1979118
1980114
1981123
1982156
1983145
1984145
1985150
1986152
1987147
1988171
1989224
1990277
1991270
1992305
1993400
1994668
19951,206
19961,748
19972,112
19982,209
19992,709
20002,781
20013,029
20023,382
20033,565
20043,827
20054,152
20064,514
20075,141
20085,982
20098,567
201010,933
201113,450
201216,824
201318,153
201418,488
201518,410
201618,277
201718,874
201819,977
201920,631
202019,865
202120,424
202220,579
202320,904
202422,252
202520,818

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 74 years between 1947–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1960198020002020Liam Cunningham, b. 1961Liam O'Brien, b. 1976Liam Garrigan, b. 1981Liam Rosenior, b. 1984Liam Hemsworth, b. 1990Liam Aiken, b. 1990Liam Payne, b. 1993Liam James, b. 1996Liam Lawson, b. 2002Liam Delap, b. 2003

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 146 sources across 79 countries.

Official registers attesting Liam
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020217K#257
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202447K#11
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202435K#66
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202521K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—20K#212
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names202220K#1
PE PeruRENIEC — Nombres y apellidos más frecuentes (frequency portal)202220K#1
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—19K#249
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202014K—
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—11K#500
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—6.6K#341
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—5.9K#610

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,392 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Liam?
We estimate roughly 349 thousand people bear Liam (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Liam have the most bearers?
Liam is most frequently recorded in the United Arab Emirates, where it is most often spelled liam.
How common is Liam compared with other names?
In the United Arab Emirates, Liam is the most common given name of 29,311 given names recorded there.
Is Liam a male or female name?
Liam is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Liam mean?
Recorded meaning: Irish short form of William, from Germanic elements meaning 'will' + 'helmet, protection'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/liam

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Liam” — the most common given name in United Arab Emirates. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Liam parses inside a full name →