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.

rarermore common
  • 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.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

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:

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)

100012001400160018002000Petronilla de Grandmesnil, countess of Leicester, b. 1145Petronilla de la Mare, b. 1248Petronilla de Meath, b. 1300Petronilla Tanner, b. 1580Petronilla Paolini Massimi, b. 1663Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham, b. 1693Maria Stella, b. 1773Brigitta Amon, b. 1844Petronilla Deterville, b. 1951

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)

InformalHi Petronilla,

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.

Official registers attesting Petronilla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020165#42,918
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—160#4,140
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—65#10,207
BR BrazilBrasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)—27#50,584
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202220—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—20#124,180
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520259#585
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19277—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—6#7,980
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19356—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19326—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19296—

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.
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.
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.
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.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/petronilla

The 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.

See how Petronilla parses inside a full name →