Puissant
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: powerful; mighty
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/pɥisɑ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Puissant is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 48K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 20K
- CMCameroon≈1 in 200K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 182 (measured from records)
- 1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
powerful; mighty
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Puissant is read(measured from records)
Puissant is one spelling over 2 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.
- French88%
powerful; mighty
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English5.6%
Powerful, mighty, having authority.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Puissant 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 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 48K | 176 | Puissant | 182 |
| BE Belgium | 581 | 1 in 20K | 581 | Puissant | 43 |
| CM Cameroon | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 200K | — | Puissant | 2 |
| US United States | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 4.5M | listed | Puissant | 48 |
| DE Germany | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 2.8M | — | Puissant | 24 |
| CH Switzerland | 13 | 1 in 646K | 13 | Puissant | 7 |
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); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Louis Puissantb. 1769FRFrench mathematician
- Jacques-Victor Puissant-de-Juzennecourtb. 1783FRFrench colonel
- Gustave Puissantb. 1830FRFrench journalist
- Maximilien Désiré Vital-Puissantb. 1831BEPublisher from Belgium
- Pierre André Puissantb. 1834FRbotanist (1834-1896)
- Edmond Puissantb. 1860BEBelgian collector (1860-1934)
- Adolphe Puissantb. 1878BEBelgian architect (1878–1950)
- Robert Puissantb. 1934FRFrench diplomat
- Éric Chardenb. 1942FRnot in their usual nameFrench singer-songwriter (1942-2012)
- Alexandre Puissantb. 1984FRresearcher ORCID ID = 0000-0002-3997-9282
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 9 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 581 | #2,561 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 567 | #2,641 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 283 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 236 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 210 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 196 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 195 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 187 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 180 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 176 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 156 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 141 | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Puissant mean, and where does it come from?
- powerful; mighty Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Puissant?
- A machine transcription gives /pɥisɑ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Puissant have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 thousand people named Puissant in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled puissant.
- Where is Puissant most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Puissant is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 20 thousand people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Puissant?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 581 people named Puissant in 2008, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Puissant?
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/puissantThe 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, “Puissant”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.