Surname statistics for Wilson

There are approximately 274,093 people named Wilson in the UK. That makes it the 7th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 4,338 are named Wilson.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)2740937N/A4338
United Kingdom (1881 census)13754370.4594593
Change since 1881+1365500-0.025-255
Other Countries
United States78305110N/A2903
Australia469615N/A2873

Politics

People with the surname Wilson are slightly less likely to be politicians than the average member of the population. When they do become politicians, they are most likely to be elected as Conservative.

As of the most recent set of elections, the political parties represented by politicians called Wilson are:

  1. Conservative (31)
  2. Labour (30)
  3. Liberal Democrat (15)
  4. Independent (4)
  5. SNP (2)
  6. Poole People Party (1)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

David Wilson
John Wilson
Andrew Wilson
Robert Wilson
Mark Wilson
Paul Wilson
James Wilson
Peter Wilson
Michael Wilson
Ian Wilson
Richard Wilson
Stephen Wilson
Christopher Wilson
Alan Wilson
William Wilson
Anthony Wilson
Stuart Wilson
Colin Wilson
Brian Wilson
Simon Wilson

Top female forenames

Susan Wilson
Margaret Wilson
Sarah Wilson
Elizabeth Wilson
Helen Wilson
Karen Wilson
Jane Wilson
Christine Wilson
Julie Wilson
Mary Wilson
Jacqueline Wilson
Patricia Wilson
Jennifer Wilson
Janet Wilson
Linda Wilson
Carol Wilson
Catherine Wilson
Nicola Wilson
Anne Wilson
Angela Wilson

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.