Willi
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Kurzform mit Kosesuffix -īn zu Wilhelm; 249 Belege
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Willi is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 548(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 3K
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 4.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 208 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 548 (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Kurzform mit Kosesuffix -īn zu Wilhelm; 249 Belege.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Willi counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #149 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 548 | — | Willi | 208 |
| AT Austria | #469 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | 98 | Willi | 69 |
| CH Switzerland | #303 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | 3.1K | Willi | 85 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,167 | 1 in 181K | 1.4K | — | 3 |
| US United States | — | 1,019 | 1 in 326K | 869 | Willi | 198 |
| DK Denmark | — | 174 | 1 in 34K | 171 | — | 1 |
| LI Liechtenstein | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 8K | 41 | — | 13 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistik Liechtenstein — Familiennamenstatistik (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Willi is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Pet form of witHELM.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
German: pet form of WILHELM .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Willi Münzenbergb. 1889DEGerman politician (1889-1940)
- Willi Baumeisterb. 1889DEGerman painter, scenic designer, and typographer (1889–1955)
- Willi Forstb. 1903ATAustrian actor, singer, director, producer, playwright (1903-1980)
- Willi Hennigb. 1913DEGerman biologist (1913–1976)
- Willi Stophb. 1914DEGerman politician (1914–1999)
- Willi Grafb. 1918DEGerman military physician and resistance fighter, "White Rose" member (1918–1943)
- Willi Heroldb. 1925DEGerman military personnel and chimney sweep (1925-1946)
- Willi Schulzb. 1938DEGerman footballer
- Rudi Dutschkeb. 1940DEnot in their usual nameGerman student activist (1940–1979)
- Willi Orbánb. 1992DEGerman Hungarian footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 66 sources across 33 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- In which country does Willi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 146 thousand people named Willi in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled willi.
- What does the name Willi mean?
- Recorded meaning: Kurzform mit Kosesuffix -īn zu Wilhelm; 249 Belege.
- Is Willi a male or female name?
- Willi is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Willi?
- In the etymology graph, William, Guillermo and Willie are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Wilhelm.
- How common is the name Willi?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,167 people named Willi in 2022, about 1 in 181 thousand residents.
- How common is Willi compared with other names?
- In Germany, Willi is the 149th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Willi?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/williThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Willi” — the 149th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.