Pesto
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A sauce, especially for pasta, originating from the Genoa region in Italy, made from basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese (usually pecorino) (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2000
Pesto is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States≈1 in 2.3M(inferred from the name graph)
- GHGhana≈1 in 270Kfew records
- ATAustria≈1 in 800Kfew records
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. 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.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 82 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 274K (inferred from the name graph)
≈150 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A sauce, especially for pasta, originating from the Genoa region in Italy, made from basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese (usually pecorino).
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where the surname Pesto is found
(measured from records)Pesto 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 | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | 104 | Pesto | 82 |
| GH Ghana | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 274K | — | Pesto | 1 |
| PH Philippines | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 4.7M | — | Pesto | 3 |
| IT Italy | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | listed | Pesto | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 6.2M | — | Pesto | 5 |
| AT Austria | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 805K | — | Pesto | 4 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 1.4M | — | Pesto | 2 |
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 2000; the xinhua-italian-manual 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)Pesto is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Polish, pesto (Italian sauce especially for pasta)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, crushed, ground, beaten
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Esperanto, pestilence
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Itālijā populāra mērce, Ligūrijas virtuves ēdiens; galvenās sastāvdaļas: svaigs baziliks, cietais siers, valrieksti vai ciedru rieksti, ķiploki, olīveļļa; pasniedz ar spageti vai minestroni
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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.
Evidence
(measured from records)4 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pesto mean, and where does it come from?
- A sauce, especially for pasta, originating from the Genoa region in Italy, made from basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese (usually pecorino). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Pesto?
- In the etymology graph, Pestle is a form of the same name in other languages.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Pesto?
- Mondonomo estimates about 145 people named Pesto in the United States, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pesto. After it come Ghana, Philippines, Italy and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Pesto?
- Mondonomo estimates about 150 people in the United States have Pesto as their first surname, about 1 in 2.3 million residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Pesto?
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/pestoThe 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, “Pesto” — ranked 146011th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.