Bill

77,823 people in America carry this name — ranked #680 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it BIHL

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B IH1 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 77,823 2020 Census
  • Rank #680 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 25.8 about 1 in 4,259 people
  • As a surname 4,630 ranked #6,995 the other way round

What Bill means and where it comes from

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “helmet of resolution”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Bill through the years

161,098 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1947, with 4,690 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40s 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Bill

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Bill Brian — same opening
  • Bill Benjamin — same opening
  • Bill Larry — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Bill was 1947. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Boys or girls: who is called Bill?

99.6% men
300 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The same name abroad

  • Willan Lus.|Neth
  • Willelme French
  • Willemin Dutch
  • Willempje Dutch

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Names built the same way as Bill

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 84.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 4.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.6%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.1%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it How Rare Is It?

Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.

Familiar

  • People counted77,823
  • Rank#680
  • Roughly1 in 4,259 people

Open the full entry

Open How Rare Is It? on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin