Pierre
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: From Greek Petros ‘rock’; co-commemorated on 29 Jun. with Paul
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pjɛʁ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pierre is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 195(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 347
- CMCameroon≈1 in 416
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- #574 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 488 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 195 (inferred from the name graph)
≈350,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
From Greek Petros ‘rock’; co-commemorated on 29 Jun. with Paul
Sources 1
- Tên Họ Người Việt Nam
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pierre is read(measured from records)
Pierre is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French78%
From Greek Petros ‘rock’; co-commemorated on 29 Jun. with Paul
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
From Greek Petros, meaning 'rock, stone'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
stone (substance)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
du nom latin Petrus, dérivé de petra « roche, pierre ».
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English12%
A male given name from French, of occasional usage, equivalent to English Peter.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pierre 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #4 | ≈350,000 est. | ≈1 in 195 | 893K | Pierre | 488 |
| CM Cameroon | #5 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 416 | — | Pierre | 68 |
| CA Canada | #155 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 4 | Pierre | 281 |
| BE Belgium | #7 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 347 | 2.8K | Pierre | 204 |
| US United States | #849 | 22,575 | 1 in 15K | 39K | Pierre | 462 |
| CH Switzerland | #48 | ≈8,600 est. | ≈1 in 974 | 204 | Pierre | 152 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Pierre is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
From New Testament Greek. See $Peter in main dictionary. ~
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Innocent Vb. 1225FRnot in their usual name185th Pope of the Catholic Church
- Clemente VIb. 1291FRnot in their usual namePope of the Catholic Church and the fourth Avignon Pope (1342–1352)
- Théophile Gautierb. 1811FRnot in their usual nameFrench poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic (1811–1872)
- Marcellin Berthelotb. 1827FRnot in their usual nameFrench chemist and politician (1827-1907)
- Pierre Lavalb. 1883FRFrench politician (1883–1945)
- Jacques Chaban-Delmasb. 1915FRnot in their usual name82nd Prime Minister of France (1915–2000)
- Louis Althusserb. 1918FRnot in their usual nameFrench Marxist philosopher (1918–1990)
- Pierre Mauroyb. 1928FR86th Prime Minister of France (1928-2013)
- Éric Cantonab. 1966FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer and actor (born 1966)
- Franck Ribéryb. 1983FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1983)
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 122 sources across 64 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 893K | #207 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 22K | #1,489 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 1964 | 860 | #1,055 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 191 | #1,489 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 159 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 26 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 1992 | 18 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 4 | #922 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2023 | 1 | #2,333 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Pierre mean, and where does it come from?
- From Greek Petros ‘rock’; co-commemorated on 29 Jun. with Paul Recorded by Tên Họ Người Việt Nam.
- Is Pierre a male or female name?
- Pierre 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.
- In which country does Pierre have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 347 thousand people named Pierre in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pierre.
- What are other forms of the name Pierre?
- In the etymology graph, Peter, Pedro and Pete are forms of the same name in other languages; Pierrick is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Pierre?
- A machine transcription gives /pjɛʁ/ (IPA) for French.
- How common is the name Pierre?
- In the United States, the national register counted 22,575 people named Pierre in 2020, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
- How common is Pierre compared with other names?
- In France, Pierre is the 4th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pierre?
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/pierreThe 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, “Pierre” — the 4th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.