List of Famous people named William

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, PC, SL was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was educated in Perth, Scotland, before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School. He was accepted into Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1723, and graduated four years later. Returning to London from Oxford, he was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn on 23 November 1730, and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent barrister.

William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans was an English aristocrat and cricketer.

William Dwight Whitney was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was the first president of the American Philological Association and editor-in-chief of The Century Dictionary.

William Howitt, was a prolific English writer on history and other subjects. Howitt Primary Community School in Heanor, Derbyshire, is named after him and his wife.

William Giles, occasionally referred to as William Giles, sen. to distinguish him from his eldest son, was the third colonial manager of the South Australian Company, and a South Australian politician, who was prominent in the founding of the colony of South Australia.