William Box

(male) Probably the most successful of all the Old French names of Germanic origin that were introduced to England by the Normans. It is derived from Germanic wil ‘will, desire’ + helm ‘helmet, protection’. The fact that it was borne by the Conqueror himself does not seem to have inhibited its favour with the ‘conquered’ population: in the first century after the Conquest it was the commonest male name of all, and not only among the Normans. In the later Middle Ages it was overtaken by John, but continued to run second to that name until the 20th century, when the picture became more fragmented.

English: from Middle English, Old English box ‘box tree’ (Latin buxus), in any of a number of possible applications. It may have been a topographic name for someone who lived by a box thicket, a habitational name from one of the places called Box, in Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, and Wiltshire, or a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked box wood, which is very hard and for this reason was used to make a variety of tools. In some cases it may even have been a nickname for a person with pale or yellow skin, for example as the result of jaundice, a reference to the color of box wood.