Peer

given name · Hindi · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Peer is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 16th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 62◐
  • NONorway1 in 168
  • DKDenmark1 in 212

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈232K ●

across 9 countries

Sources
260 ●

150K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 62 ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

PerLatin · Danish●153K records

Locally spelled Per in SE Sweden, DK Denmark, NO Norway and 15 more.

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●

To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Peer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#16165,022△27K rec.1 in 62165KPer173
NO Norway#1032,53920K rec.1 in 16878KPer127
DK Denmark#2527,640△11K rec.1 in 21228KPer170
DE Germany#80914,44814K rec.—2Peer153
IN India—7,0611.3K rec.—351Peer61
US United States—4,33455K rec.1 in 77K4.3KPer260
GB United Kingdom—2,4694K rec.——Per70
FI Finland—1,721△174 rec.1 in 3.2K4.2KPer23
AU Australia—1,3802.1K rec.—1Per62
BJ Benin#59031K rec.——Per10
CA Canada—8301.8K rec.——Per53
TN Tunisia#497505624 rec.——Per5

Roughly 165K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 62). 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●

  • Hindi35K26%
  • 31K23%
  • Urdu20K15%
  • German11K8%
  • English10K8%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi34,89826%
31,10723%
Urdu19,54915%
German10,7678%
English10,0098%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Peer is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name74K records spelled Peer80 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, Sri Lanka

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Assamese

    Also written Piru, Piyar, Pir, Para, পিয়ার

  • a separate given name49K records spelled Peer6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Pe’er, Pe'Er, Peér, Péer, Peèr

  • Danish given name8.4K records spelled Peer7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, India

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian

    Also written Pëëř

  • French given name896 records spelled Peer17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Sweden, Norway, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Per, Pér, Pėer, Pêr, Pęr

58 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Peer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, Zugehörige Schreibvariante; Familienname zu Rufname Bernhard. Bearer count: 164 Tokens in Süddeutschland und Westmitteldeutschland; 1005 Telef. in Österreich.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen

  • In German, männl. Vom., niederländische, norwegi­ sche und dänische Form von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In English, Biblical name

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In enm, alternative form of pere (“peer”)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Dutch, a pear, a fruit of the pear tree

    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.

Over time●

0100200300190019201940196019802000277 · 1959

Show as table
Peer in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1900–2015
Yearrecords
19001
19141
19151
19171
19181
19204
19216
19228
19231
192410
192510
19267
19279
192815
192926
193018
193114
193251
193325
193445
193543
193652
193742
193858
193954
194071
194164
1942128
194371
1944126
194587
1946116
1947109
1948128
1949161
1950123
1951139
1952193
1953147
1954204
1955164
1956137
1957187
1958184
1959277
1960200
1961233
1962271
1963209
1964274
1965213
1966224
1967242
1968181
1969238
1970211
1971196
1972203
1973207
1974159
1975184
1976226
1977166
1978178
1979155
1980152
1981176
1982216
1983204
1984222
1985206
1986185
1987199
1988190
1989190
1990228
1991171
1992177
1993209
1994158
1995113
199651
199762
199831
19991
20011
20051
20071
200814
20091
20109
201110
20125
201419
20153

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 95 years between 1900–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1920194019601980Peer Schmidt, b. 1926Peer Hultberg, b. 1935Peer Raben, b. 1940Peer Mascini, b. 1941Peer Jäger, b. 1943Peer Steinbrück, b. 1947Peer-Uwe Teska, b. 1955Peer Martiny, b. 1958Peer Åström, b. 1972Peer Kluge, b. 1980

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 54 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Peer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—6K#887
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.8K#8,118
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.7K#8,773
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.6K#8,847
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.4K#4,235
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—1.2K#297
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—468#2,632
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—377#1,954
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020351#20,345
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—351#11,968
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—287#4,443
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1959277—

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 289 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Peer?
We estimate roughly 232 thousand people bear Peer (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Peer have the most bearers?
We estimate about 165 thousand people bear Peer in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled per.
Where is Peer most common?
Peer is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 62 people carrying it.
How common is Peer compared with other names?
In Sweden, Peer is the 16th most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
Is Peer a male or female name?
Peer is a male 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.
What does the name Peer mean?
Recorded meaning: To look with difficulty, or as if searching for something.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/peer

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Peer” — the 16th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Peer parses inside a full name →