Pelle
surname · Latin script
Meaning: part, of peler to peel, strip (esp (The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 29 countries · latest register: St Kitts & Nevis, 2026
/pɛl/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary
Pelle is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- ITItaly≈1 in 17Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 25K
- DKDenmark1 in 37K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 225 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,500 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Pelle
- French:/pɛl/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- Spanish:/pɛʎɛ/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)part, of peler to peel, strip (esp. of hair), L (de)pilare, from pilus hair; the spelling has been influenced by L pellis skin, hide). Var.: P^kalski. Pekarek see Piekarski Var.: Pele. Pej.: Fr.: Pelard. Pekny Czech: nickname for a man who was either fairhaired or handsome, Czech pekny. Peller see Pill Pelaez see Pelayo
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Pelle is found
(measured from records)Pelle 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Pelle | 39 |
| FR France | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 404 | Pelle | 4 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Pelle | 10 |
| PH Philippines | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 143K | — | Pelle | 28 |
| US United States | 800 | 1 in 416K | 822 | Pelle | 225 |
| NL Netherlands | 690 | 1 in 25K | 1.3K | Pelle | 41 |
| DK Denmark | 160 | 1 in 37K | 2.9K | — | 4 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 1 | 1 in 54K | 1 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); the xinhua-italian-manual register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)Pelle 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 French, shovel, spade
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Pelle är ursprungligen en svensk smekform till → Per, → Peter, som först i ganska sen tid blivit vanlig som officiellt tilltalsnamn.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, männl. Vom., schwedische Koseform von Per (
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Swedish: pet form of Per , the Scandinavian form of PETER .
as a word
In Danish, a diminutive of the male given name Per or Peter, sometimes also used as a formal given name
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)- István Pelleb. 1907HUHungarian gymnast (1907-1986)
- Anikó Pelleb. 1978HUHungarian water polo player
- Chloé Pelleb. 1989FRFrench rugby union player (1989-)
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)53 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 29 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Pelle come from?
- part, of peler to peel, strip (esp. of hair), L (de)pilare, from pilus hair; the spelling has been influenced by L pellis skin, hide). Var.: P^kalski. Pekarek see Piekarski Var.: Pele. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- What does the name Pelle mean?
- Recorded meaning: part, of peler to peel, strip (esp.
- What are other forms of the name Pelle?
- In the etymology graph, Peer, Petri and Pero are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Pelle?
- It depends on the language: in French /pɛl/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /pɛʎɛ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Pelle?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.5 thousand people named Pelle in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pelle. After it come France, South Africa, Philippines and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Pelle?
- In the United States, the national register counted 800 people named Pelle in 2010, about 1 in 416 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pelle?
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/pelleThe 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, “Pelle”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.