Wilbur
- Pronunciation
- [Wil-bur]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Strong Fortress
- Origin
- English
About the Name Wilbur
Wilbur is an English name meaning from the strong fortress — built on Old English elements suggesting will or determination combined with a fortified dwelling, though the precise compound has also been analyzed as a variant of Wilburg (will-fortress) or as a place-name surname transferred into first-name use. Like many Victorian-era Anglo-Saxon given names, Wilbur carried the weight of an Old English heritage that lent it a solid, dependable character. Its two-syllable structure and the -bur ending gave it a slightly archaic feel even at the height of its popularity, distinguishing it from the smoother Germanic names that dominated the same era.
Wilbur A. Smith was a Rhodesian-born British novelist, born on January 9, 1933, in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia), who died on November 13, 2021, in Cape Town, South Africa. The son of a cattle rancher, he became one of the most widely read adventure novelists in the English language, with a career spanning decades and a bibliography centered on African history and adventure — a bearer who kept the name in international literary circulation well into the twenty-first century.
In US Social Security records, Wilbur first entered the male top-1000 in 1912 and reached its peak rank of #91 in 1913, reflecting the early-twentieth-century taste for sturdy Old English names. It maintained a presence through 1921 — sitting at #100 in its final top-1000 year — after accumulating 15,223 top-1000 births across its decade-long run. Recorded variants include Wilber, Wilbert, and Wilburt, each representing small orthographic adjustments to the same phonetic core, giving the name a modest family of spelling alternatives within the Wil- prefix tradition.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Wilbur
US Popularity History (1912–1921)
Annual US births named Wilbur by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 1,800 boys named Wilbur (boy rank #97 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1921, ranked #100 for boys (1,755 US births). That's 3 places below its 1918 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Variant Forms
Famous People Named Wilbur
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Wilbur.
- Wilbur A. Smith is the author of numerous popular and best-selling novels including ‘When the Lion Feeds’ and ‘Men of Men’.
Looking for names like Wilbur?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Wilbur to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Wilbur against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).