Wilbur is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
There’s a good chance that a boy named Wilbur in a medium-sized town will be unique. That’s because only a few babies a year are named Wilbur in all of the US. Only about one in 100,000 boys is named Wilbur by his parents. In the ranking of most common boys names in recent years, Wilbur ranks at #3,575. That means there are 3,574 more common boys names, but there are also a few thousand that are even rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 48,926 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Wilbur. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Wilbur is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Wilbur for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Wilbur is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Wilbur is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #89 Wilbur easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1913.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Wilbur was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 30 babies were named Wilbur in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #3,231 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2012, when it was only ranked #5,028 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 15 boys were named Wilbur.
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 Wilbur 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 Wilbur 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 Wilbur, you can simply say:
Windmill
Igloo
Lion
Butterfly
Unicorn
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Wilbur
Wilbur
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
I
L
B
U
R
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
B
U
R
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. Wilbur sounds like this:
