Willie

156,156 people in America carry this name — ranked #358 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Greatest Generation.

Say it WIH lee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

W IH1 L IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 156,156 2020 Census
  • Rank #358 Common

What Willie 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.

Willie through the years

595,556 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1925, with 11,070 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. 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 Willie

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Willie William — same opening
  • Willie Eric — runs together
  • Willie Edward — 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.

Going quiet

Willie has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Greatest Generation.

Is Willie used for boys or for girls?

85.5% men
22,603 women

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

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 13.4%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 79.9%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 2.9%
  • Two or more races — 2.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

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.

How Willie is spelled

Willie is how 72% of them spell it — 218,366 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The states where Willie is most common

In Mississippi the name is given 8.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×8.9
  • Alabama ×4.9
  • South Carolina ×4.0
  • Georgia ×3.5
  • Louisiana ×2.9

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The same name elsewhere

  • Myne Lith
  • Mine German
  • Mimi French
  • Will English
  • Minne German
  • Minka Polish
  • Wille Swiss
  • Willy English
  • Mynette Lith
  • Minette French
  • Minella English
  • Mimmeli Swiss
  • Guillot French
  • Wilhelm Swiss|Ger

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.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Names with the same rhythm as Willie

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

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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