William
Meaning of William
William comes from the Germanic elements wil, meaning "will" or "desire," and helm, meaning "helmet" or "protection," and name dictionaries generally gloss it as "resolute protector." The Normans brought the name to England, where it has been in steady use ever since. It is pronounced WIL-yum in both British and American English, with no difference between the two.
Its most famous bearer is William Shakespeare, whose plays remain the most widely performed and studied works in English. History offers William the Silent, who led the Dutch revolt against Spain, and William Ewart Gladstone, four times British prime minister. Among modern namesakes, William Shatner is widely known as Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk.
In the United States the name has seldom been far from the top. It ranked second in 1880, and in 1947 it was given to 67,002 babies, its highest count on record. It later slipped to 20th in 1995 before recovering to third in 2011. In 2025 it ranked ninth, with 10,545 babies.
Pronunciation
British English
- Pronunced as WIL-yum (/wɪl.jəm//)
American English
- Pronunced as WIL-yum (/wɪl.jʌm//)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named William
| William Ewart Gladstone was a British statesman who led the Liberal Party and served four nonconsecutive terms as Prime Minister between 1868 and 1894, plus four as Chancellor of the Exchequer, during a 60 year parliamentary career. |
| William Shatner is a Canadian actor best known for portraying Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek from 1966 to 1994. |
| William F. Buckley Jr. - William Frank Buckley Jr. was an influential American conservative author and commentator. |
| William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor known as the Bard who remains the most influential writer in English, with works still performed worldwide. |
| William O. Douglas was a US Supreme Court associate justice from 1939 to 1975, a staunch progressive and civil libertarian who became one of the youngest appointees and the court's longest-serving member. |
| William of Orange, known as William the Silent, led the Dutch revolt against Spain that sparked the Eighty Years War and Dutch independence, founded the Orange Nassau line, and is honored as Father of the Fatherland. |
| William Friedkin was an American New Hollywood director best known for The French Connection, which won Best Picture and earned him Best Director, and The Exorcist, which brought another Best Director nomination. |
| William Carlos Williams was an American poet and physician of modernism whose everyday imagery and the ambitious Paterson bridged poetry and visual art and earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. |
| William Holden was a top 1950s American actor who won an Oscar for Stalag 17 and an Emmy for The Blue Knight. |
| William Patrick Roache is an English actor best known for playing Ken Barlow on Coronation Street, where he has appeared continuously since 1960 and holds a Guinness World Record as the longest serving TV star in a continuous role. |
