Pieter
given name · Latin script
Meaning: männl. Vom., niederdeutsche und niederländische Form von
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pitər/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pieter is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country, where it is the 37th most common given name.
- NLNetherlands1 in 106(measured from records)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 543
- BEBelgium≈1 in 908
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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 282 (measured from records)
- 1 in 106 (inferred from the name graph)
162,756 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
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)
männl. Vom., niederdeutsche und niederländische Form von
Sources 1
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pieter 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #37 | 162,756 | 1 in 106 | 162K | Pieter | 203 |
| ZA South Africa | #152 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 543 | — | Pieter | 124 |
| BE Belgium | #142 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 908 | 1 | Pieter | 173 |
| CN China | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 379K | — | Pieter | 9 |
| US United States | — | 1,697 | 1 in 196K | 1.7K | Pieter | 282 |
| NZ New Zealand | #714 | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 11 | Pieter | 38 |
| LU Luxembourg | #128 | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Pieter | 7 |
162,756 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Pieter 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 Afrikaans, a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English 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)
- Pieter Aertsenb. 1508NLpainter from the Northern Netherlands (1508-1575)
- Pieter Brueghel the Elderb. 1525NLFlemish painter (1526–1569)
- Pieter Brueghel der Jüngereb. 1564BEFlemish painter (1564–1638)
- Pieter Claeszb. 1596BEFlemish-Dutch painter (c.1596–1660)
- Pieter van Laerb. 1599NLDutch painter and engraver (1599-1642)
- Pieter de Hoochb. 1629NLDutch Golden Age painter (1629-1684)
- Pieter Zeemanb. 1865NLDutch physicist (1865–1943)
- Piet Mondrianb. 1872NLnot in their usual nameDutch painter (1872–1944)
- Pieter Willem Bothab. 1916ZASouth African prime minister (1916–2006)
- Pieter van den Hoogenbandb. 1978NLDutch swimmer
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 55 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 162K | #14 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 79K | #20 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #8,535 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 366 | #2,471 |
| NL Netherlands | SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered) | 2017 | 180 | #89 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1956 | 11 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5 | #8,535 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 5 | #42,347 |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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
- How do you pronounce Pieter?
- A machine transcription gives /pitər/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Pieter have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 163 thousand people named Pieter, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pieter.
- Where is Pieter most common?
- Pieter is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 106 people carrying it.
- What does the name Pieter mean?
- Recorded meaning: männl. Vom., niederdeutsche und niederländische Form von
- Is Pieter a male or female name?
- Pieter 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 Pieter?
- In the etymology graph, Peter, Pedro and Pierre are forms of the same name in other languages; Piet is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Pieter?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 162,756 people named Pieter, about 1 in 106 residents.
- How common is Pieter compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Pieter is the 37th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pieter?
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/pieterThe 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, “Pieter” — the 37th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.