Pekka
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Pekka är en östfinsk form av ryskans Pedka ’lille Petrus’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Pekka is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common given name.
- FIFinland1 in 75(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 184Kas Peg
- USUnited States1 in 234Kas Peg
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 Pekka 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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 324 (measured from records)
- 1 in 75 (inferred from the name graph)
73,831 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Peg in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and Pech in LA Laos.
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)
Pekka är en östfinsk form av ryskans Pedka ’lille Petrus’. Namnet etablerades i Finland redan under medeltiden. Den finske presidenten Pehr Evind Svinhufvud (1861–1944) kallades Ukko-Pekka ’gubben Pekka’, vilket kan ha bidragit till namnets popularitet. En känd nutida namnbärare i Sverige är programledaren Pekka Heino (f. 1961).
Sources 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pekka 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | #13 | 73,831 | 1 in 75 | 105K | Pekka | 155 |
| SE Sweden | — | 2,055 | 1 in 5K | 2.1K | Pekka | 59 |
| US United States | — | 1,422as Peg | 1 in 234K | 40K | Peg | 324 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 103K | — | Peg | 65 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 184K | 8.4K | Peg | 48 |
| LA Laos | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Pech | 7 |
| EE Estonia | #333 | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | 12 | Pekka | 8 |
| SK Slovakia | — | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 74K | 52 | — | 1 |
73,831 people counted by DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register). 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: DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census). 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)
Pekka 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.
Finnish: vernacular form of PETER (cf. PIETARI ).
as a word
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)
- Pekka Halonenb. 1865FIFinnish painter (1865-1933)
- Paavo Johanssonb. 1895FInot in their usual nameFinnish athletics competitor (1895–1983)
- Pekka Niemib. 1909FIcross-country skier
- Pekka Sammallahtib. 1947FIFinnish linguist, professor emeritus
- Pekka Vasalab. 1948FIFinnish middle- and long distance runner
- Pave Maijanenb. 1950FInot in their usual nameFinnish singer (1950–2021)
- Pekka Haavistob. 1958FIFinnish politician and minister for foreign affairs
- Jari Kurrib. 1960FInot in their usual nameFinnish ice hockey player
- Pekka Kuusistob. 1976FIFinnish violinist, jazz musician and composer (born 1976)
- Jesse Joronenb. 1993FInot in their usual nameFinnish footballer (born 1993)
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 21 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 54 | #21,296 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 16 | #29,709 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 10 | #10,572 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 9 | #11,900 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Pekka have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 74 thousand people named Pekka, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pekka.
- Where is Pekka most common?
- Pekka is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 75 people carrying it.
- What does the name Pekka mean?
- Recorded meaning: Pekka är en östfinsk form av ryskans Pedka ’lille Petrus’.
- Is Pekka a male or female name?
- Pekka 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 Pekka?
- In the etymology graph, Peter, Pedro and Pierre are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Pekka?
- In Finland, the national register counted 73,831 people named Pekka, about 1 in 75 residents.
- How common is Pekka compared with other names?
- In Finland, Pekka is the 13th most common given name of 19,056 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pekka?
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/pekkaThe 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, “Pekka” — the 13th most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.