List of Famous people named William

William James Harris, 6th Earl of Malmesbury TD, styled Viscount FitzHarris until 1950, was a British peer.

William Sloane Coffin Jr. was an American Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ. In his younger days he was an athlete, a talented pianist, a CIA officer, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of H. Richard Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He also was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. He went on to serve as Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York City and President of SANE/Freeze, the nation's largest peace and social justice group, and prominently opposed United States military interventions in conflicts, from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War. He was also an ardent supporter of gay rights.

William I (Willame) de Percy (d.1096/9), 1st feudal baron of Topcliffe in North Yorkshire, known as Willame als gernons, was a Norman nobleman who arrived in England immediately after the Norman Conquest of 1066. He was the founder of the powerful English House of Percy, Earls of Northumberland, and Dukes of Northumberland, a great historical House of England "that, like Caesar's, has been artificially preserved (twice) to the present time". The male line ended in 1174/5 on the death without male progeny of his grandson William II de Percy, but the surname "Percy" was re-adopted by the latter's younger grandson Richard de Louvain (d.1244), whose own "Percy" descendants again failed in the male line in 1670 on the death of Joceline Percy, 11th Earl of Northumberland, and was again re-adopted by the latter's great-grand-daughter's husband Sir Hugh Smithson, 4th Baronet (c.1714-1786), created Duke of Northumberland, whose descendants survive today.

William I, Count of Schwarzburg-Frankenhausen, was the ruling Count of Schwarzburg-Frankenhausen from 1571 until his death. He was the founder of the Schwarzburg-Frankenhausen line.

Colonel The Hon. William Le Poer Trench CVO, JP was an Anglo-Irish politician and British army officer.