Petar
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Petar är en sydslavisk form av → Petrus
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pětar/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Petar is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Bulgaria it is the 6th most common given name.
- HRCroatia1 in 162(measured from records)
- BGBulgaria1 in 98as Петар
- USUnited States1 in 716as Peter
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Petar itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 175 (measured from records)
- 1 in 162 (inferred from the name graph)
464,396 named Peter, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Петър in BG Bulgaria.
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)
Petar är en sydslavisk form av → Petrus.
Sources 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Petar 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 464,396as Peter | 1 in 716 | 464K | Petar | 175 |
| HU Hungary | — | 135,685as Péter | 1 in 72 | 136K | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | — | 112,872as Peter | 1 in 90 | 113K | Petar | 23 |
| BG Bulgaria | #6 | 70,898as Петар | 1 in 98 | 71K | Петър | 159 |
| DK Denmark | — | 45,777as Peter | 1 in 128 | 46K | — | 3 |
| HR Croatia | #12 | 26,068 | 1 in 162 | 26K | Petar | 138 |
464,396 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling peter. 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); NSI — most common given names (population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Petar 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.
In German, männl. Vom., bulgarische, serbische, kroatische, makedonische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Russian, var of Petr.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Latin, first-person singular future passive indicative of petō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, to explode, blow up, let off, set off
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, present indicative of peta
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Petar I Petrović-Njegošb. 1749MESerbian Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral and Ruler of (Old) Montenegro
- Petar II Petrović-Njegošb. 1813MEPrince-Bishop of Montenegro
- Peter I of Serbiab. 1844FRnot in their usual nameSerbian noble (1844–1921); King of Serbia from 1903 to 1918
- Prince Peter of Montenegrob. 1889MEnot in their usual namePrince of Montenegro
- Petar Stambolićb. 1912RSYugoslav communist politician (1912-2007)
- Petar II Karađorđevićb. 1923USlast King of Yugoslavia from 1934 to 1945 (1923-1970)
- Petar Mladenovb. 1936BGformer General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1936–2000)
- Petar Stoyanovb. 1952BGBulgarian politician and jurist (born 1952)
- Tom Rogicb. 1992AUnot in their usual nameAustralian association football player (born 1992)
- Peter Krešimir IV of CroatiaHRnot in their usual nameKing of Croatia
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 64 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BG Bulgaria | NSI — most common given names (population) | 2018 | 71K | #5 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 26K | #20 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 24K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #8,749 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 676 | #2,222 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 601 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 154 | #1,080 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 14 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 12 | #8,749 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- In which country does Petar have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 464 thousand people named Peter, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Petar most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Petar is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 162 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- Is Petar a male or female name?
- Petar 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 Petar?
- In the etymology graph, Peter, Pedro and Pierre are forms of the same name in other languages; Petko and Perica are recorded short or pet forms.
- How do you pronounce Petar?
- A machine transcription gives /pětar/ (IPA) for Croatian.
- How common is the name Petar?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 26,068 people named Petar in 2021, about 1 in 162 residents.
- How common is Petar compared with other names?
- In Bulgaria, Petar is the 6th most common given name of 22,906 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Petar mean?
- Recorded meaning: Petar är en sydslavisk form av → Petrus.
What do you want to know about Petar?
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/petarThe 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, “Petar” — the 6th most common given name in Bulgaria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.