Pigeon
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Pigeon is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: from a medieval nickname for a gullible person; or ‘hunter of (wood) pigeons’; or from Petyjon/Petjon, literally ‘little John’.
- USUnited States
- NZNew Zealand
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 246 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for a gullible person; or ‘hunter of (wood) pigeons’; or from Petyjon/Petjon, literally ‘little John’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pigeon counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1.7K | Pigeon | 246 |
| CA Canada | — | — | Pigeon | 144 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 116 | Pigeon | 73 |
| AU Australia | — | — | Pigeon | 20 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | — | Pigeon | 6 |
| FR France | — | 448 | — | 6 |
| BE Belgium | — | 242 | — | 11 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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)
Pigeon is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, One of several birds of the family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, de l’ancien français pigeon « oiselet, pigeonneau »; surnom d’un éleveur ou d’un marchand.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
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)
- Marie Anne Victoire Pigeonb. 1724FRFrench mathematician
- Louis-Philippe Pigeonb. 1905CAJustice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1905-1986)
- Gilles Schneiderb. 1943FRnot in their usual nameFrench journalist
- Jos LeDucb. 1944CAnot in their usual nameCanadian professional wrestler (1944-1999)
- Michel Pigeonb. 1945CACanadian politician
- Kristy Pigeonb. 1950USUS tennis player
- Simon Pigeonb. 1992CACanadian actor
- Hugo Pigeonb. 1996FRFrench racing cyclist
- Félix Pigeonb. 2002CACanadian speed skater
- Taylor Pigeonactress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 17 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #17,087 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,293 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,765 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 654 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 634 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 556 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 534 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 518 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 493 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 463 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 448 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 360 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Pigeon mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for a gullible person; or ‘hunter of (wood) pigeons’; or from Petyjon/Petjon, literally ‘little John’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Pigeon have the most bearers?
- Pigeon is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled pigeon.
What do you want to know about Pigeon?
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/pigeonThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Pigeon”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.