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Williams

Williams, also written Guillaume, Willems, Guilhem, William. Attested in United States of America, Spain, France, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, Ireland, borne by about 1,630,609 people in the registers this map holds.

Also written

A person linked these — Wikidata's «said to be the same as», or a family archive that worked it out from documents.

GuillaumeWillemsGuilhemWilliamWillyamsWiliemsViljamsa

The same name, spelt two ways

One systematic substitution — s for z, w for v, ch for h — where BOTH spellings are independently attested surnames. Kosina and Kozina are one man in two clerks' handwriting. Stronger than sounding alike, weaker than somebody having checked.

WiliamsWillliams

Only sounds alike

An algorithm's guess. Useful for casting a net, and not evidence.

WillamsWilliamsiWillms

What Wikidata says this name is

Copied from Wikidata, not worked out here. It is crowd-sourced and wrong in places, which is why the item is linked below rather than the claim simply repeated.

  • English the language of the name

    Which is not where a family is from. A Polish surname can be borne by people whose forebears never saw Poland, and often is.

  • Read about it on Wikipedia ↗ an article, with its own sources

Q1688722 on Wikidata ↗ — the item every line above came from.

What Wiktionary says this name is

Copied from the surname template on Wiktionary, not worked out here, and not from its etymology prose. Anyone may edit it; the page and the revision it was read at are linked below.

  • patronymics what the English entry says it is from
  • English what the French entry says it is from
  • English · French recorded as a surname in these languages

    A language here is the language of the NAME, not a country a family came from — the same caveat the Wikidata section carries, and worth repeating rather than assumed read.

Williams on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 92158037. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is also the name of a place

3 places drawn, the largest being Williams, Williams, WilliamWilliam — 1Williams — 912Williams — 5,196
Where those places are. A dot is a settlement whose name is this surname, sized by its population — not a claim that anybody of the name lives there. Phonetic neighbours are listed below but not drawn: putting a machine's guess on the ground would dress it up as geography.

This is as close to an origin as this map will go. A surname that is also a place name often came from it — and often did not: plenty are occupations or patronymics that happen to collide with a place, and plenty of places are named after a family rather than the other way round. It is a fact with a source, which is more than an etymology page offers.

  • Williams United States of America pop. 5,196
  • Williams Australia pop. 912
  • William United States of America a spelling of the name

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 9 countries: United States of America, Spain, France, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, IrelandDenmark — attested, not countedIreland — attested, not countedSlovenia — 16 peoplePoland — 209 peopleBelgium — 244 peopleNorway — 514 peopleFrance — 1,322 peopleSpain — 3,052 peopleUnited States of America — 1,625,252 people
A dot is a country, not a place. It sits at the country's centre because a national register counts a country; nothing here says where in it these people are. A hollow ring is attested but not counted — Denmark publishes which surnames exist and not how many carry each, and a family archive finds a name without counting heads. Sizing those by a number nobody published would invent it. Blank is not absence. This draws the 9 countries where the eleven registers and eight archives behind this atlas attest the name. Most of the world has no surname register this project can read, and the ones that do and will not are listed with the reason.
Belgium, by commune. 244 people in 28 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 43. This is the only country here that can be drawn this way — every other register counts a country and stops, so a blank elsewhere is a gap in what states publish, not in the name.
28 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Elsene, Gent, Brussel, Ukkel, Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht, Sint-Pieters-Woluwe, Watermaal-Bosvoorde, Zaventem, OudergemSint-Truiden — 5Eupen — 5Sint-Niklaas — 5Waterloo — 5Tervuren — 5Kortenberg — 5Sint-Genesius-Rode — 5Etterbeek — 5Anderlecht — 5La Louvière — 6Brugge — 6Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe — 6Sint-Gillis — 6Mechelen — 6Bergen — 7Jurbeke — 7Leuven — 7Overijse — 7Oudergem — 7Zaventem — 8Watermaal-Bosvoorde — 8Sint-Pieters-Woluwe — 9Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht — 10Ukkel — 11Brussel — 12Gent — 16Elsene — 17Antwerpen — 43

Country by country

Each country below can carry up to three different kinds of evidence, and none of them is the same claim. A register is a head-count — a state counted these people. A record is one document naming the surname on that ground, narrower evidence and often much older. And a volume overlapping these dates is a document from the right place and years — never a document known to name this surname. None of the three ever means the name exists in that country and nowhere else, or that it exists nowhere but here.

United States of America

1,625,252 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

527,556 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1660s, 1670s, 1680s, 1690s, 1710s, 1720s, 1730s, 1740s, 1750s, 1760s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

Spain

3,052 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

40 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Williams is attested here. None is known to name Williams: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

France

1,322 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

1,221 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1360s, 1640s, 1740s, 1760s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists, Probate, land and notarial. See everything this atlas holds for France →

Norway

514 Borne — a state counted them — Etternavn brukt av 200 personer eller flere (SSB tabell 12891).

Whose archive to write to

Belgium

244 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

22,955 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1520s, 1580s, 1610s, 1750s, 1780s, 1790s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Church and parish registers, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for Belgium →

Poland

209 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

1,654 of 15,686 volumes held for Poland overlap the 1920s, 1930s, 1970s and 1990s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials, Censuses and population lists. See everything this atlas holds for Poland →

Slovenia

16 Borne — a state counted them — Family names, Slovenia, 2026 (SURS tables 05X1015S–05X1018S).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Williams in Slovenia, so it cannot narrow Slovenia's 1,585 volumes by date — see Slovenia's own page for all of it.

Denmark

Borne — a state counted them — Navne registreret i Danmark, January 2020 (Danmarks Statistik, republished by Digitaliseringsstyrelsen).

Whose archive to write to

1,327 of 4,099 volumes held for Denmark overlap the 1830s, 1890s and 1970s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials. See everything this atlas holds for Denmark →

Ireland

Borne — a state counted them — Surnames of babies with ten or more occurrences, 2023–2025 (CSO, VSA110).

Whose archive to write to

840 of 1,568 volumes held for Ireland overlap the 1750s, 1820s, 1840s, 1850s, 1870s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s — the decades Williams is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Williams. The commonest kinds: Newspapers and gazettes, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Ireland →

When it was being born, in France

INSEE counts births by surname and decade from the état civil, 1891 to 2000 — the only dated evidence in this dataset. A name that starts at zero and climbs arrived; a name that falls to nothing left, died out, or emigrated, and the decade it stops is the decade to stop searching. It counts births registered in France, so a family that emigrated in 1900 simply stops appearing, which is information rather than a defect.

  • 1891–1900 18
  • 1901–1910 36
  • 1911–1920 51
  • 1921–1930 53
  • 1931–1940 39
  • 1941–1950 64
  • 1951–1960 237
  • 1961–1970 228
  • 1971–1980 136
  • 1981–1990 185
  • 1991–2000 275

Whose archive held that ground, and when

Every surname site can tell you a name is common somewhere. This one also knows which filing system held that ground in which years — and those are the two halves of one question: my people were called this, they were there, so who has the paper, and for which century. A name in Croatia before 1881 may sit in a military series and not a county one; a name in the Netherlands before 1811 has no civil record at all, only a baptism.

This is about the ground, not about your family. A register counting a name in a country says nothing about which village. And these are the pieces of a country this atlas has drawn, which in a large one may be a corner of it — Acadia reaches into Maine and is not a statement about the United States, and Bohemia's ground crosses into Poland. Each region's own page says which ground it covers. Where a country is missing below, nothing covers it yet.

United States of America
France
Norway
  • Norway 3 eras Denmark–Norway → Norway in union with Sweden, with its own constitution → Norway
Belgium
Poland
  • Pomerania and Danzig 7 eras Duchy of Pomerania → Swedish Pomerania in the west; Brandenburg-Prussia in the east → Prussia → German Empire → …
  • Bohemia 6 eras Kingdom of Bohemia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Sudetenland and the Reichsprotektorat → …
  • Posen — Prussian Poland 8 eras Poland → Prussia → Duchy of Warsaw → German Empire → …
  • Galicia 6 eras Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia → Poland → Austria → German and Soviet occupation → …
  • Moravia and Silesia 6 eras Margraviate of Moravia → Austria → Czechoslovakia → Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren → …
  • East Prussia 4 eras State of the Teutonic Order → Duchy, then Kingdom, of Prussia → German Empire → Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel
  • Silesia 6 eras Habsburg Bohemian crown lands → Prussia → German Empire → Divided → …
  • Congress Poland — the Russian partition 7 eras Russian Empire → Duchy of Warsaw → Kingdom of Poland, in personal union with Russia → Poland, restored → …

Regions are also drawn in 3 other countries where this name is attested, further down the register's own list. The order here is how many people a register counted, so the countries above are the ones the name most belongs to.

No record region is drawn yet for Spain — which is a gap in this atlas and not a statement about that country.

Find Williams on the map →

The surname dataset · CC0, and downloadable