Petru
given name · Latin script
Meaning: a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Peter
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/petru/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Petru is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country, where it is the 79th most common given name.
- MDMoldova1 in 141(measured from records)
- RORomania≈1 in 723
- ITItaly≈1 in 17K
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.
- Romania (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 164 (measured from records)
- 1 in 141 (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Moldova
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Peter
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Petru 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RO Romania | #79 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 723 | — | Petru | 121 |
| MD Moldova | #28 | 23,843 | 1 in 141 | 24K | Petru | 57 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 2 | Petru | 74 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,401 | 1 in 36K | 1.4K | Petru | 57 |
| FR France | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 58K | listed | Petru | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 3 | Petru | 25 |
| IS Iceland | — | 35 | 1 in 10K | 35 | — | — |
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: e-services.md — living population register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); the french-names-benoist-2009 register. 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)
Petru 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.
In Lithuanian, instrumental singular of Pẽtras (“Peter”)
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)
- Peter the Greatb. 1672RUnot in their usual nameTsar/Emperor of Russia from 1682 to 1725
- Peter II of Russiab. 1715RUnot in their usual nameEmperor of Russia (1715-1730)
- Peter III of Russiab. 1728DEnot in their usual nameThe seventh Emperor of Russia (1762)
- Pyotr Bagrationb. 1765RUnot in their usual nameGeneral of the Imperial Russian Army (1765–1812)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskyb. 1840RUnot in their usual nameRussian composer (1840–1893)
- Peter Kropotkinb. 1842RUnot in their usual nameRussian revolutionary socialist and philosopher (1842–1921)
- Pyotr Stolypinb. 1862DEnot in their usual nameRussian politician (1862–1911)
- Pyotr Wrangelb. 1878LTnot in their usual nameRussian army general of Baltic German origin (1878-1928)
- Pyotr Kapitsab. 1894RUnot in their usual nameSoviet physicist
- Peter Svidlerb. 1976RUnot in their usual nameRussian chess player
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 53 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 24K | #43 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.4K | #964 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1.4K | #2,260 |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 35 | — |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 2 | #4,444 |
| FR France | Dictionary of French Prénoms (Benoist, 2009) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- 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 Petru mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Peter Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Petru?
- A machine transcription gives /petru/ (IPA) for Romanian.
- In which country does Petru have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Petru in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled petru.
- Where is Petru most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Petru is densest in Moldova — about 1 in 141 people — even though Romania holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Petru?
- In Moldova, the national register counted 23,843 people named Petru, about 1 in 141 residents.
- How common is Petru compared with other names?
- In Romania, Petru is the 79th most common given name of 34,167 given names recorded there.
- Is Petru a male or female name?
- Petru 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 Petru?
- In the etymology graph, Peter, Pedro and Pierre are forms of the same name in other languages; Petrica is a recorded short or pet form.
What do you want to know about Petru?
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/petruThe 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, “Petru” — the 79th most common given name in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.