Pontian
loc · Latin script
Meaning: pope
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Pontian is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 750K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.2Mas Pontianus
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Pontian 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 11 (measured from records)
- 1 in 750K (inferred from the name graph)
14 named Pontianus
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Pontianus in NG Nigeria.
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)
pope
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pontian 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 14as Pontianus | 1 in 1.2M | 14 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 1 | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | — | — | — | Pontianus | 11 |
| US United States | — | — | — | Pontian | 4 |
| VA Vatican City | — | — | 1 | — | — |
14 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Holy See — List of Roman Pontiffs (papal regnal + secular names); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Pontian is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, The Pontic Greek dialect of the historical Pontus region of Asia Minor.
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 2 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pontian mean, and where does it come from?
- pope Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Pontian have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 14 people named Pontianus, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Pontian most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pontian is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 750 thousand people — even though Netherlands holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Pontian?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 1 people named Pontian in 2025, about 1 in 750 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pontian?
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/pontianThe 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, “Pontian”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.