Petronilla
given name · Latin script
Meaning: saint's name, disciple of Petrus
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/petɾonilɑ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Petronilla is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Kenya.
- KEKenya
- USUnited States
- ITItaly
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
saint's name, disciple of Petrus
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
- KEKenya
- USUnited States
- BRBrazil
- NGNigeria
- ITItaly
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Petronilla de Grandmesnil, countess of Leicesterb. 1145English countess
- Petronilla de la Mareb. 1248English noblewoman, married first Robert de Montfort (d. 1274) and second John de la Mare (d. 1313)
- Petronilla de Meathb. 1300IEIrish woman burnt for heresy
- Petronilla Tannerb. 1580CH(1580-1629)
- Petronilla Paolini Massimib. 1663ITItalian poet
- Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsinghamb. 1693DEnot in their usual nameBritish countess (1693–1778)
- Maria Stellab. 1773ITnot in their usual nameItalian-born memoirist, self-styled legitimate daughter of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
- Brigitta Amonb. 1844DEnot in their usual namezitherist (1844-1890)
- Petronilla Detervilleb. 1951LCSt. Lucian music educator
- Petronilla CrispoLady of Andros, daughter of Francesco I Crispo, wife of Zeno
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 25 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 165 | #42,918 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 160 | #4,140 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 65 | #10,207 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 27 | #50,584 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 20 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 20 | #124,180 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 9 | #585 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1927 | 7 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 6 | #7,980 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1935 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1932 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1929 | 6 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What does the name Petronilla mean, and where does it come from?
- saint's name, disciple of Petrus Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Petronilla?
- A machine transcription gives /petɾonilɑ/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- Is Petronilla a male or female name?
- Petronilla is a female 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 Petronilla?
- In the etymology graph, Nela, Petronella and Pernille are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Petronilla have the most bearers?
- Petronilla is most frequently recorded in Kenya.
What do you want to know about Petronilla?
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/petronillaThe 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, “Petronilla”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.