Liam is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
Liam is extremely common as a first name for boys. Currently, over 20,000 babies are named Liam each year, giving it first place for boys in the SmartGenius first name statistics. Of all the boys born in the last ten years, 1.1 % are named Liam. In the entire USA, approximately 292,047 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Liam. That is 0.09 % of all living Americans.
The first name Liam has several origins and meanings. In Old High German it comes from the name Willahelm, which means ‘helmet of will’, close to the Irish origin, where Liam is a short version of the name Uilliam, meaning ‘strong-willed-warrior’ and ‘protector’.
Did you know... that Liam is a modernized form of the traditional name William.
Liam Gallagher (*1972)
The English singer is actually named 'William John Paul Gallagher' and best known as lead vocalist of the rockband Oasis in which, by the way, his brother Noel played guitar.
Liam Hemsworth (*1990)
The Australian is the youngest of the three Hemsworth brothers, all of whom are active as actors. His most famous role was probably that of Gale Hawthorne in the film adaptation 'The Hunger Games'.
Liam Neeson (*1952)
The Northern Irishman has been one of Hollywood's great actors since his breakthrough performance as Oskar Schindler in 'Schindler's List', for which he was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe.
Liam O'Brien (*1976)
The US-American has dubbed over 100 different characters in video games, cartoons and translations of Japanese anime. One of his biggest roles is 'Gaara' from 'Naruto'.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Liam is one of them. However, Liam is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Nevada seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,529 men called Liam who live here are 0,447% of all male residents and push their name up to #51 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Nevada. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 292,047 people with the name Liam. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Liam on position 116 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter L is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.1% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Liam 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.
Thus, it follows that with 4.1% of all boys' names starting with an L, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with L that are quite common, the most common in the U.S. at present is Larry.
If your name is Liam 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 Liam, you can simply say:
Lion
Igloo
Apple
Mouse
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Liam
Liam
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
L
I
A
M
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.
L
I
A
M
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. Liam sounds like this:
