Will serves as a nickname and short form for a lot of names beginning with ‘Will-‘. In most cases, it is short for William, a name of Germanic origin meaning ‘vehement protector’.
Will is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Will 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, Will ranks 799. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 1 were named Will. In the entire USA, approximately 26,053 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Will. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Will serves as a nickname and short form for a lot of names beginning with ‘Will-‘. In most cases, it is short for William, a name of Germanic origin meaning ‘vehement protector’.
Did you know that... Will Smith's first name is Willard?
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Will is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Will for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Will is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Will is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #24 Will has never been more popular than back in 1882.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Will was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
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 four letters, the name Will is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. 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 Will 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 Will, you can simply say:
Windmill
Igloo
Lion
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Will
Will
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
I
L
L
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
L
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. Will sounds like this:
