Petit
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: small
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/piti/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Petit is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 8th most common surname.
- FRFrance≈1 in 838(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 1.9K
- USUnited States1 in 9.5Kas Petty
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 Petit 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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 381 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 838 (inferred from the name graph)
≈81,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
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)
From Anglo-Norman petit ‘small’; or from a medieval nickname for a small person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Petit is read(measured from records)
Petit is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French71%
small
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
de petit; surnom d’un individu de petite taille ou du plus jeune d’une famille.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- Spanish13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Petit in Spanish.
- English12%
From Anglo-Norman petit ‘small’; or from a medieval nickname for a small person.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Petite: small, little.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Petit 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #8 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 838 | 10K | Petit | 381 |
| US United States | — | 34,882as Petty | 1 in 9.5K | 35K | Petit | 283 |
| CN China | — | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Petit | 6 |
| HT Haiti | #20 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Petit | 18 |
| BE Belgium | #37 | 6,144 | 1 in 1.9K | 6.1K | Petit | 126 |
| CM Cameroon | #692 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | — | Petit | 8 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 16as Petty | 1 in 3.4K | 16 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the ht-potomitan-names register; 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)
Petit 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 Latin, third-person singular present active indicative of petō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, second-person singular past indicative of pettää
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)
- Roland Petitb. 1924FRFrench ballet dancer and choreographer (1924–2011)
- Pascale Petitb. 1938FRFrench actress
- Jean-Claude Petitb. 1943FRFrench pianist, composer and arranger
- Philippe Petitb. 1949FRFrench high-wire artist
- Frédéric Petitb. 1961FRFrench politician (born 1961)
- Antoni Martí Petitb. 1963AD6th Prime Minister of Andorra (1963–2023)
- Emmanuel Petitb. 1970FRFrench footballer (born 1970)
- Aurélia Petitb. 1971FRFrench actress
- Armando Gonçalves Teixeirab. 1976PTnot in their usual namePortuguese football manager and former player
- Adrien Petitb. 1990FRFrench road cyclist
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 39 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 14K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 13K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 12K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 12K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 11K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 10K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 10K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 10K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 7.8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.2K | #5,409 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 6.1K | #66 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- Where does the name Petit come from?
- From Anglo-Norman petit ‘small’; or from a medieval nickname for a small person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Petit?
- A machine transcription gives /piti/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Petit mean?
- In French, small
- What are other forms of the name Petit?
- In the etymology graph, Pequeño is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Petit have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 81 thousand people named Petit in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled petit.
- How common is the name Petit?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 6,144 people named Petit in 2008, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Petit compared with other names?
- In France, Petit is the 8th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Petit?
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/petitThe 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, “Petit” — the 8th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.