Wilson was originally an English surname meaning ‘son of William’. William goes back to the Germanic name Willehelm and means ‘vehement protector’.
Wilson is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Wilson isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Wilson ranks 595. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Wilson. In the entire USA, approximately 40,813 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Wilson. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Wilson annualy. This means that there have been boys named Wilson who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Wilson have consistently been special. A small flight of popularity was experienced by the name way back in the last century and in one particular year, parents liked Wilson even more than any other time: in 1913, it holds its present record at rank #114 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Wilson was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Wilson has never been ranked higher than #114. In 2022, he rivaled the 646 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 386 boys named Wilson were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Wilson were born, there have been 513 newborns who received this name.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter W is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with a W, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, W is by no means the rarest initial. While J, A and D are the most common first letters of boys' names, X, U and Q are the least common initials of feminine first names.
With six letters, the name Wilson is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.5% of all boys’ names begin with a W, this initial occurs less than half as often as the other letters on average. By the way, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a W, William is currently the most common.
If your name is Wilson and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Wilson, you can simply say:
Windmill
Igloo
Lion
Sun
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Wilson
Wilson
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
I
L
S
O
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
W
I
L
S
O
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Wilson sounds like this:
