Williams

surname · English · Latin script

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

Williams is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: English/Welsh surname meaning "son of William".

rarermore common
  • JMJamaica1 in 47◐
  • GYGuyana1 in 66
  • USUnited States1 in 205

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

≈1.7M ●

across 12 countries

#62 ●

of 21M surnames

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
614 ●

16M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 28 ◐

St. Vincent & Grenadines

Spellings & scripts●

WilliamsLatin · English●18M records
ᲣილიამსიGeorgian · Georgian●3 records
উইলিয়ামসBengali · Bangla●2 records
윌리엄스Hangul · Korean●0 records

Locally spelled Williams- in VC St. Vincent & Grenadines.

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●

English/Welsh surname meaning "son of William".

Sources 1

  • sanames.co.za — South African surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Williams is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#31,625,25214M rec.1 in 2051.6MWilliams614
GB United Kingdom#41,014,642833K rec.——Williams323
AU Australia#3346,353322K rec.——Williams320
CA Canada#4235,968232K rec.—5Williams257
JM Jamaica#2102,73641K rec.——Williams72
IT Italy#663,46964K rec.——Williams113
ZA South Africa#1852,94151K rec.——Williams167
DE Germany#9152,04352K rec.——Williams179
NG Nigeria#9241,31349K rec.——Williams132
RU Russia—39,80941K rec.——Williams74
EG Egypt#7425,03425K rec.——Williams46
GY Guyana#311,43215K rec.1 in 6611KWilliams30

Roughly 1.6M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 205). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages●

  • English18M81%
  • 1.5M6%
  • Spanish894K4%
  • Welsh299K1%
  • German135K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English18,177,96481%
1,460,1206%
Spanish893,8794%
Welsh299,0301%
German134,7081%

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◐

Williams is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname1.5M records spelled Williams4 spellings in the group

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

    Also written William-S, Will-Iams

  • Spanish surname1.4M records spelled Williams12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Argentina, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written William-S, Wïllïäms, Williäms, ̶W̶i̶l̶l̶i̶a̶m̶'̶s̶, William'S

  • French surname157K records spelled Williams6 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written William''S, William'S, William-S

  • Polish surname60K records spelled Williams18 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Уилямс, Uilyams, Wíllîâms, Уйлямс, Вилијамс

  • Greek surname34K records spelled Williams5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Also written Γουίλιαμς, Ouiliams, Γουιλιαμς, Ουιλιαμς

  • Indonesian surname33K records spelled Williams6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Nigeria

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written Wîllïãmš, Wïlliams, William'S

91 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●

Williams 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, Americanized given name used as surname form

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

  • In English, ‘son of William’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In English, Ralph Vaughan, see Vaughan

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, from Welsh Gwilym

    as a nameWelsh Surnames

  • Winston(e) v. Trewin Winnv. Gwyn

    as a nameWelsh Surnames

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●

025507510019001950200086 · 1950

Show as table
Williams in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188011
18817
18827
188313
188411
188511
188613
188713
18889
18896
189010
18917
189216
18937
189412
189510
18969
189714
189812
18999
190015
190111
190211
19039
190415
190512
190612
190711
190818
190920
191015
191122
191231
191321
191445
191553
191655
191744
191855
191945
192073
192151
192253
192354
192465
192547
192668
192768
192866
192958
193074
193155
193257
193342
193456
193564
193641
193757
193851
193950
194073
194147
194254
194350
194454
194548
194664
194760
194859
194964
195086
195156
195246
195351
195450
195575
195658
195765
195859
195960
196053
196166
196245
196356
196446
196554
196647
196745
196846
196952
197039
197158
197246
197333
197445
197542
197643
197728
197837
197933
198036
198129
198244
198333
198435
198533
198643
198747
198844
198939
199069
199144
199254
199359
199451
199529
199646
199747
199842
199953
200048
200163
200262
200358
200452
200553
200657
200763
200868
200956
201036
201145
201247
201340
201438
201545
201636
201742
201852
201945
202037
202146
202240
202357
202453
202540

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000William Carlos Williams, b. 1883Tennessee Williams, b. 1911Hank Williams, b. 1923Billy Williams, b. 1929Betty Williams, b. 1943Jody Williams, b. 1950Chris Williams, b. 1968Venus Williams, b. 1980Michelle Williams, b. 1980Serena Williams, b. 1981

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 121 sources across 60 countries.

Official registers attesting Williams
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.6M#3
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.6M#3
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.5M#3
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 2025202511K#3
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20207.6K#2,846
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20243.8K#328
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)20253.6K#1
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20223.5K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—3.5K#3,502
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—3.2K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20232.7K#2,191
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—2.6K#5,037

Reference works 5

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 926 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Williams?
We estimate roughly 1.7 million people bear Williams (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Williams have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.6 million people bear Williams in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled williams.
Where is Williams most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Williams is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 28 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Williams compared with other names?
In the United States, Williams is the 3rd most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Williams mean?
Recorded meaning: English/Welsh surname meaning "son of William".
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/williams

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, “Williams” — the 3rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Williams parses inside a full name →