Peter

464,396 people in America carry this name — ranked #99 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.

Say it PEE tur

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

P IY1 T ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 464,396 2020 Census
  • Rank #99 Common
  • Per 100,000 153.8 about 1 in 714 people
  • As a surname 9,240 ranked #3,738 the other way round

What Peter means and where it comes from

Greek in origin, reading literally as “stone”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Peter name popularity by year

582,329 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1957, with 11,617 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Peter

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Peter Robert — runs together
  • Peter Richard — runs together
  • Peter Paul — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Peter has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Peter a boy's or a girl's name?

99.9% men
489 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where in America Peter is thickest on the ground

In Rhode Island the name is given 3.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Rhode Island ×3.2
  • Vermont ×3.2
  • Massachusetts ×3.0
  • Connecticut ×3.0
  • Maine ×2.8

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 80.9%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 3.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 6.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 6.5%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

How Peter is spelled

Peter is how 95% of them spell it — 487,361 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Same syllables and stress as Peter

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The same name elsewhere

  • Pet Esth
  • Per Swiss
  • Piet Dutch
  • Pies Polish
  • Pier Italian
  • Petr Bohm.|Russ
  • Peto Lus
  • Pero Italian
  • Pejo Ill
  • Pedo Esth
  • Pjetr Lus
  • Piotr Polish
  • Pieti Polish
  • Piers English

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Greek origin