Pestel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: meist als Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian gedeutet; auch zu mhd
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ptɛl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pestel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 494K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 1.9M
- BEBelgium1 in 2.3M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 4 (measured from records)
- 1 in 494K (inferred from the name graph)
178 people, 2010
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)
meist als Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian gedeutet; auch zu mhd. besten 'binden, schnüren' gestellt. Bearer count: 225.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pestel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 178 | 1 in 1.9M | 178 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | 35 | 1 in 494K | 35 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 7 | 1 in 7.1M | 7 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 5 | 1 in 2.3M | 5 | — | 1 |
| PL Poland | 3 | 1 in 13M | 3 | — | — |
178 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Pestel 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 enm, A pestle (tool for crushing or pounding)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In fro, pestle (tool used for crushing food)
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)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Pestelb. 1724DEGerman jurist (1724–1805)
- François Pestelb. 1763FRFrench naval engineer of the 18-19th centuries (1763–1828)
- Pavel Pestelb. 1793RURussian revolutionary (1793–1826)
- Madame Pestelb. 1869British commercial photographer (1869-1940)
- Vera Pestelb. 1887RURussian painter (1887-1952)
- Eduard Pestelb. 1914DEGerman scholar and politician (1914-1988)
- Roswitha Pestelb. 1950DEGerman association football player
- Charles Pestelb. 1978FRFrench actor
- Arthur Pestelb. 1987FRFrench actor
- Julien Pestelb. 1988FRFrench actor
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)
Attested in 15 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 178 | #106,589 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 178 | #101,247 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 174 | #96,918 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 35 | #38,104 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 7 | #143,513 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #98,310 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #281,770 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Pestel?
- A machine transcription gives /ptɛl/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Pestel mean?
- Recorded meaning: meist als Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian gedeutet; auch zu mhd.
- In which country does Pestel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 178 people named Pestel, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Pestel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pestel is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 494 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Pestel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 178 people named Pestel in 2010, about 1 in 1.9 million residents.
What do you want to know about Pestel?
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/pestelThe 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, “Pestel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.