Payet
surname · French · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Payet is a surname, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Réunion it is the 7th most common surname. It appears chiefly in French and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Variant of Payeur, ‘treasurer’ or payer of disbursements.
- FRFrance1 in 14K◐
- RERéunion1 in 276
- SCSeychelles1 in 3.6K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈5.6K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 275 ●
- 1 in 14K ◐
across 9 countries
recorded for this name
60K records
Official registry-verified
France
Spellings & scripts●
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
Variant of Payeur, ‘treasurer’ or payer of disbursements.
Sources 1
- Tên Họ Người Việt Nam
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #103 | 4,781 | 56K rec. | 1 in 14K | 4.8K | Payet | 275 |
| AU Australia | — | 813 | 732 rec. | — | — | Payet | 62 |
| US United States | — | 474 | 591 rec. | 1 in 702K | 474 | Payet | 61 |
| RE Réunion | #7 | 463 | 1.2K rec. | — | — | Payet | 43 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 212 | 146 rec. | — | — | Payet | 44 |
| ES Spain | — | 204 | 328 rec. | 1 in 245K | 204 | Payet | 22 |
| RU Russia | — | 119 | 114 rec. | — | — | Payet | 11 |
| DE Germany | — | 84 | 76 rec. | — | — | Payet | 35 |
| CA Canada | — | 63 | 55 rec. | — | — | Payet | 16 |
| SC Seychelles | #10 | 58 | 24 rec. | — | — | Payet | 21 |
| BE Belgium | — | 46 | 143 rec. | 1 in 255K | 46 | Payet | 20 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 45 | 25 rec. | 1 in 187K | 45 | Payet | 15 |
Roughly 4.8K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 14K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- French118K97%
- English1.6K1%
- Spanish1.4K1%
- German2491%
- Catalan2041%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 117,772 | 97% |
| English | 1,560 | 1% |
| Spanish | 1,371 | 1% |
| German | 249 | 1% |
| Catalan | 204 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 306 |
| 1901 | 1,645 |
| 1911 | 1,944 |
| 1921 | 2,462 |
| 1931 | 2,970 |
| 1941 | 3,440 |
| 1951 | 4,686 |
| 1961 | 5,337 |
| 1971 | 4,690 |
| 1981 | 5,149 |
| 1991 | 4,781 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Alain Payetb. 1947FRFrench pornographic film director & actor (1947–2007)
- Paulet Payetb. 1947FRFrench politician
- Anne-Marie Payetb. 1949FRFrench politician
- Jean-Michel Payetb. 1955FRFrench architect
- Pascal Payetb. 1963FRFrench escapee from detention
- Rolph Payetb. 1968SCSeychellois politician
- Manu Payetb. 1975FRFrench actor, comedian, radio and television presenter
- Laëtitia Payetb. 1985FRFrench judoka
- Dimitri Payetb. 1987REFrench footballer (born 1987)
- Marie Payetb. 1992FRBeauty pageant winner
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 16 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 5.3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 5.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 4.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 4.7K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 4.7K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 3.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 2.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 1.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 1.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 306 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 204 | #16,313 |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 27 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Payet?
- We estimate roughly 5.6 thousand people bear Payet (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Payet have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 4.8 thousand people bear Payet in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled payet.
- How common is Payet compared with other names?
- In France, Payet is the 103rd most common surname of 1,061,840 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Payet mean?
- Recorded meaning: Variant of Payeur, ‘treasurer’ or payer of disbursements.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/payetThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Payet” — the 103rd most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.