Wille

surname · English · Latin script

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

Wille is a surname, most frequently recorded in Germany. In Liechtenstein it is the 42nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Apokope; plate shows loss of final vowel in Wille ~ Will.

rarermore common
  • BEBelgium1 in 8.1K◐
  • DEGermany1 in 8.9K
  • USUnited States1 in 89K

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

≈7.1K ●

across 15 countries

Sources
258 ●

52K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 395 ◐

Greenland

Meaning & origin●

Apokope; plate shows loss of final vowel in Wille ~ Will.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Wille is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#74012,47811K rec.—1Wille140
US United States—3,73433K rec.1 in 89K3.7KWille258
BE Belgium#7881,445△448 rec.1 in 8.1K1.4KWille43
GB United Kingdom—9751.3K rec.——Wille44
AU Australia—522597 rec.——Wille42
NO Norway—506△71 rec.1 in 11K506—26
CA Canada—502667 rec.——Wille30
NL Netherlands—407259 rec.1 in 42K407Wille38
AT Austria—381245 rec.——Wille42
DK Denmark—3020 rec.1 in 19K302—1
IT Italy—259322 rec.——Wille6
LI Liechtenstein#422525 rec.—102Wille16

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

Languages●

  • English29K46%
  • German18K27%
  • Portuguese3.4K5%
  • Dutch3.2K5%
  • Spanish2.3K4%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English29,42146%
German17,52427%
Portuguese3,3865%
Dutch3,2095%
Spanish2,2754%

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◐

Wille is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese surname13K records spelled Wille3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Argentina, United States, Costa Rica

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Willé

  • Danish surname3.5K records spelled Wille16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, Greenland

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian

    Also written Ville, Villé, Vïllē, Vìllè, Vïllë

  • a separate surname2.2K records spelled Wille2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Norway

    Also written Willé

  • French surname2.2K records spelled Wille4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Willé, Wíllė

62 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●

Wille 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 English, Obsolete spelling of will.

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

  • In German, Meist Kurzform zu Wilhelm; auch zu Wiltrud möglich, mit ahd./altsächs. willio 'Wille'. 4036 Belege.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Kurzform zu Willi/Willhelm u.ä.; Karte zeigt Apokope und starke/schwache Genitivformen, teils mit Umlaut- und Vokalvarianten.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, from OHG/OS willio 'will, desire, joy'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In Swedish, a diminutive of the male given names William or Wilhelm

    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●

0510152019201940196017 · 1929

Show as table
Wille in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1907–1979
Yearrecords
19076
19096
19105
19127
19135
19146
19158
19166
19179
19186
19196
19206
19217
19225
192310
19247
192512
19268
19278
19287
192917
19306
19319
19326
19346
19388
194011
19419
19436
19449
19456
194610
19475
19486
194913
195011
195111
195412
19558
19576
19598
19605
19616
196211
19635
19645
19665
19675
19705
19795

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 50 years between 1907–1979. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1700180019002000Johann Georg Wille, b. 1715Pierre Alexandre Wille, b. 1748Ulrich Wille, b. 1848Bruno Wille, b. 1860Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille, b. 1883Paul Wille, b. 1949Hans-Christian Wille, b. 1958Marie Louise Wille, b. 1970Clare Wille, b. 1973

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 47 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Wille
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.7K#8,780
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.5K#8,626
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.3K#9,350
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2.6K#907
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202K—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20081.4K#810
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—1.4K#849
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020723#13,600
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—513#2,060
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—506#2,684
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—470—
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007407#4,921

Reference works 6

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • 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)

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

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 199 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Wille?
We estimate roughly 7.1 thousand people bear Wille (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
In which country does Wille have the most bearers?
Wille is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled wille.
How common is Wille compared with other names?
In Germany, Wille is the 740th most common surname of 734,811 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Wille mean?
Recorded meaning: Apokope; plate shows loss of final vowel in Wille ~ Will.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wille

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, “Wille” — the 740th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Wille parses inside a full name →