Nestor
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Greek name from Nestor, the wise king of Pylos in Homer
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nestoɾ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nestor is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 50th most common given name.
- ARArgentina≈1 in 300(inferred from the name graph)
- PYParaguay≈1 in 406
- UYUruguay≈1 in 430
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.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- #833 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 376 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 300 (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Argentina, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Greek name from Nestor, the wise king of Pylos in Homer.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nestor 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #116 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 300 | 163 | Nestor | 138 |
| PH Philippines | #95 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 739 | — | Nestor | 105 |
| VE Venezuela | #170 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 709 | — | Nestor | 86 |
| CO Colombia | #203 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 53 | Nestor | 150 |
| PE Peru | #217 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 945 | — | Nestor | 96 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 22,036 | 1 in 767 | 22K | Nestor | 60 |
| PY Paraguay | #91 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 406 | — | Nestor | 47 |
| UY Uruguay | #50 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 430 | — | Nestor | 64 |
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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names. 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)
Nestor is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Name born in classical legend by one of the leaders of the Greeks at Troy, the aged but still vigorous king of Pylos. It may represent a derivative of Greek nostos ‘homecoming’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Adhastair, formerly Mac Girr an Adhastair, a patronymic from a byname meaning ‘short man of the halter’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Humanistic Dutch and German name from a classical Greek personal name, borne by a king of Pylos who was one of the Greek leaders in the Trojan war, noted for his age and wisdom. In Homer’s Odyssey, the aged Nestor gives wise advice to Odysseus’ son Telemachos. According to Debrabandere, in Dutch this was a nickname sometimes given to the oldest person in a group.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An old and wise king in Homer's Iliad.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Dans l’ Iliade et l’ Odyssée , Nestor est le roi légendaire de Pylos, le plus âgé des princes qui assistèrent au siège de Troie, un vieillard plein de sagesse quoique ses discours fussent fort longs. Le mot est passé dans le langage pour désigner un vieillard sagace.
as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
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)
- Nestor the Chroniclerb. 1056UASaint and chronicler of Kievan Rus'
- Eemil Nestor Setäläb. 1864FIFinnish politician and linguist (1864–1935)
- Nestor Makhnob. 1888UAUkrainian anarchist revolutionary (1888–1934)
- Nestor Paivab. 1905USAmerican actor (1905-1966)
- Néstor Almendrosb. 1930ESSpanish director of photography and director (1930–1992)
- Néstor Kirchnerb. 1950ARPresident of Argentina from 2003 to 2007
- Nestor Serranob. 1955USAmerican actor
- Nestor Carbonellb. 1967USAmerican actor
- Néstor Cantillanab. 1973CLChilean actor
- Néstor Pitanab. 1975ARformer actor and football referee
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 109 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 22K | #112 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 72 | #889 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 53 | #72 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 33 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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
- What does the name Nestor mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek name from Nestor, the wise king of Pylos in Homer. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Nestor a male or female name?
- Nestor 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 Nestor?
- In the etymology graph, Nestori is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Nestor?
- A machine transcription gives /nestoɾ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Nestor have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 152 thousand people named Nestor in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nestor.
- How common is the name Nestor?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 22,036 people named Nestor in 2024, about 1 in 767 residents.
- How common is Nestor compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Nestor is the 116th most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nestor?
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/nestorThe 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, “Nestor” — the 116th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.