Pete
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Kiswahili: "a ring"; also an English male name from Greek meaning "stone"
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/piːt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pete is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 4.5K
- USUnited States1 in 716as Peter
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Pete 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
- 530 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
464,396 named Peter, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, 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)
Kiswahili: "a ring"; also an English male name from Greek meaning "stone".
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Pete, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pete 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 | #658 | 464,396as Peter | 1 in 716 | 464K | Pete | 530 |
| HU Hungary | — | 135,685as Péter | 1 in 72 | 136K | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | — | 112,872as Peter | 1 in 90 | 113K | Pete | 41 |
| DK Denmark | — | 45,777as Peter | 1 in 128 | 46K | Pete | 43 |
| GB United Kingdom | #547 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | 2.9K | Pete | 266 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 11,496as Peter | 1 in 183 | 11K | — | 3 |
| NO Norway | — | 10,118as Petter | 1 in 540 | 36K | Pete | 18 |
| NZ New Zealand | #321 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Pete | 95 |
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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); SURS — resident population given 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)
Pete 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 Spanish, blowjob
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
stone.
as a nameAfrican Names
In Akan, w, v. ^0 bruise, quash, squash, crush, grind, pound, to dash in pieces; to be bruised, crushed &c. cf. fetew, potow. apeti, 5. apiti
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In French, PETE (“polyethylene terephthalate”) abbreviation of polyéthylène téréphtalate
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pi, inflection of peta (“ghost”):
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)
- Charles Conradb. 1930USnot in their usual nameAmerican astronaut and lunar explorer (1930–1999)
- Pete Roseb. 1941USAmerican baseball player (1941–2024)
- Pete Postlethwaiteb. 1946GBEnglish character actor (1946–2011)
- Pete Maravichb. 1947USAmerican basketball player (born 1947)
- Pete Sessionsb. 1955USAmerican politician
- Pete Rickettsb. 1964USUnited States Senator from Nebraska since 2023
- Pete Docterb. 1968USAmerican animator and film director
- Pete Samprasb. 1971USAmerican tennis player (born 1971)
- Pete Hegsethb. 1980USUnited States Secretary of Defense
- Pete Buttigiegb. 1982USAmerican politician (born 1982)
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 64 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 29K | #1,288 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 114 | #1,288 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 58 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 48 | #12,200 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 35 | #17,254 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 16 | #5,132 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2021 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2005 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 are other forms of the name Pete?
- In the etymology graph, Pedro, Pierre and Petro are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Peter.
- What does the name Pete mean, and where does it come from?
- Kiswahili: "a ring"; also an English male name from Greek meaning "stone". Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Pete?
- A machine transcription gives /piːt/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Pete a male or female name?
- Pete 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 Pete 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.
- How common is the name Pete?
- In the United States, the national register counted 464,396 people named Peter in 2020, about 1 in 716 residents.
- How common is Pete compared with other names?
- In the United States, Pete is the 658th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pete?
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/peteThe 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, “Pete” — the 658th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.