Will
- Pronunciation
- [Will]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Resolute
- Origin
- English
About the Name Will
Will is an English short form of William, which descends from the Old High German Willahelm — a compound of willa (will, desire, resolution) and helm (helmet, protection), yielding the meaning "resolute protector." As a standalone given name, Will carries centuries of independent use in the English-speaking world, long predating its modern revival as a birth-certificate name separate from its parent form. Its single syllable and strong consonant opening give it an uncomplicatedly direct character.
The most notable bearer in the naming record is Will Durant, the American historian, philosopher, and writer best known for The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume narrative history of Eastern and Western civilizations co-authored with his wife.
Will appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the earliest year tracked, and peaked in 1882 at rank #25 — placing it among the names already well established at the dawn of modern the modern American naming era. Its total top-1000 births across the full tracked run reach over 22,000, a figure that reflects intermittent rather than continuous dominance: the name dipped in and out of the top-1000 across the 20th century before persisting into the 21st. It appeared at #942 as recently as 2020. That long intermittent presence underlines Will's status as a perennial rather than a trend name — it has never fully gone away, and its clean simplicity keeps it relevant across generations. No variants are recorded for this name.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Will
US Popularity History (1880–2020)
Annual US births named Will by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1888 with 707 boys named Will (boy rank #28 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #942 for boys (234 US births). That's 914 places below its 1888 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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Where in the US Is Will Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Will the strongest states are Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nebraska | #439 | 24 |
| 2 | Minnesota | #468 | 99 |
| 3 | Iowa | #521 | 33 |
| 4 | Utah | #531 | 79 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #576 | 43 |
| 6 | Wisconsin | #653 | 74 |
| 7 | Michigan | #739 | 41 |
| 8 | Washington | #747 | 62 |
| 9 | Illinois | #792 | 99 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #793 | 42 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tennessee | #905 | 27 |
| 2 | California | #883 | 144 |
| 3 | Indiana | #878 | 39 |
| 4 | Ohio | #870 | 68 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #793 | 42 |
| 6 | Illinois | #792 | 99 |
| 7 | Washington | #747 | 62 |
| 8 | Michigan | #739 | 41 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #653 | 74 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #576 | 43 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Will in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Famous People Named Will
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Will.
- Will Durant was an American writer, historian and philosopher, best known for his work ‘The Story of Civilization’.
Looking for names like Will?
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 Will to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Will against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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