Per
given name · Danish · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Per 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 Danish and Norwegian Bokmål, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: For each, for every, per.
- 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 ●
- Sources
- 260 ●
- 1 in 62 ◐
across 9 countries
150K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Peer in DE Germany, IN India, NL Netherlands and 5 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●
For each, for every, per.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 13 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | #16 | 165,022△ | 27K rec. | 1 in 62 | 165K | Per | 173 |
| NO Norway | #10 | 32,539 | 20K rec. | 1 in 168 | 78K | Per | 127 |
| DK Denmark | #25 | 27,640△ | 11K rec. | 1 in 212 | 28K | Per | 170 |
| DE Germany | #809 | 14,448 | 14K rec. | — | 2 | Peer | 153 |
| IN India | — | 7,061 | 1.3K rec. | — | 351 | Peer | 61 |
| US United States | — | 4,334 | 55K rec. | 1 in 77K | 4.3K | Per | 260 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 2,469 | 4K rec. | — | — | Per | 70 |
| FI Finland | — | 1,721△ | 174 rec. | 1 in 3.2K | 4.2K | Per | 23 |
| AU Australia | — | 1,380 | 2.1K rec. | — | 1 | Per | 62 |
| BJ Benin | #5 | 903 | 1K rec. | — | — | Per | 10 |
| CA Canada | — | 830 | 1.8K rec. | — | — | Per | 53 |
| TN Tunisia | #497 | 505 | 624 rec. | — | — | Per | 5 |
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●
- Danish153K39%
- Norwegian Bokmål78K20%
- Swedish44K11%
- Norwegian29K7%
- English24K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Danish | 153,455 | 39% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 77,740 | 20% |
| Swedish | 44,449 | 11% |
| Norwegian | 28,682 | 7% |
| English | 23,720 | 6% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Per 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 Danish, For each; for every
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, For each.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, männl. Vom., durch Zusammenziehung entstandene nordische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In kr, s. horse: per bl, stone- horse, stallion; per kurgurl, marc; per kddara, pony; per ngerrna, a large horse, such as the common European horses; per mdgomi, horses of a
as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)
In kr, cm, s. the leg of cattle, sheep, goats, asses and camels, from the knee downwards (not used of horses or mules.)
as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1945 | 1,169 |
| 1946 | 1,321 |
| 1947 | 1,181 |
| 1948 | 1,190 |
| 1949 | 1,128 |
| 1950 | 1,063 |
| 1951 | 1,053 |
| 1952 | 984 |
| 1953 | 1,019 |
| 1954 | 1,014 |
| 1955 | 1,087 |
| 1956 | 1,109 |
| 1957 | 1,028 |
| 1958 | 1,091 |
| 1959 | 1,065 |
| 1960 | 935 |
| 1961 | 987 |
| 1962 | 971 |
| 1963 | 958 |
| 1964 | 1,045 |
| 1965 | 982 |
| 1966 | 914 |
| 1967 | 860 |
| 1968 | 833 |
| 1969 | 745 |
| 1970 | 599 |
| 1971 | 556 |
| 1972 | 505 |
| 1973 | 461 |
| 1974 | 443 |
| 1975 | 359 |
| 1976 | 353 |
| 1977 | 351 |
| 1978 | 318 |
| 1979 | 373 |
| 1980 | 290 |
| 1981 | 290 |
| 1982 | 269 |
| 1983 | 274 |
| 1984 | 251 |
| 1985 | 225 |
| 1986 | 222 |
| 1987 | 217 |
| 1988 | 193 |
| 1989 | 220 |
| 1990 | 188 |
| 1991 | 209 |
| 1992 | 145 |
| 1993 | 160 |
| 1994 | 143 |
| 1995 | 139 |
| 1996 | 124 |
| 1997 | 91 |
| 1998 | 116 |
| 1999 | 91 |
| 2000 | 72 |
| 2001 | 57 |
| 2002 | 68 |
| 2003 | 63 |
| 2004 | 59 |
| 2005 | 52 |
| 2006 | 44 |
| 2007 | 47 |
| 2008 | 37 |
| 2009 | 46 |
| 2010 | 39 |
| 2011 | 44 |
| 2012 | 38 |
| 2013 | 29 |
| 2014 | 32 |
| 2015 | 25 |
| 2016 | 28 |
| 2017 | 26 |
| 2018 | 26 |
| 2019 | 36 |
| 2020 | 25 |
| 2021 | 20 |
| 2022 | 26 |
| 2023 | 36 |
| 2024 | 33 |
| 2025 | 38 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 81 years between 1945–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Per Teodor Cleveb. 1840SESwedish chemist who discovered holmium and thulium (1840-1905)
- Per Albin Hanssonb. 1885SESwedish politician, Prime Minister of Sweden between 1932–1936 and 1936–1946 (1885–1946)
- Per Bortenb. 1913NO25th Prime Minister of Norway (1913–2005)
- Per Olov Enquistb. 1934SESwedish writer (1934–2020)
- Morten Olsenb. 1949DKnot in their usual nameDanish footballer
- Per Gessleb. 1959SESwedish musician and songwriter
- Andreas Norlénb. 1973SEnot in their usual nameSpeaker of the Riksdag
- Henrik Dorsinb. 1977SEnot in their usual nameSwedish actor and comedian
- Jimmie Åkessonb. 1979SEnot in their usual nameSwedish politician
- Per Mertesackerb. 1984DEGerman association football player
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 60 sources across 30 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 · 378 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Per?
- We estimate roughly 232 thousand people bear Per (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Per have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 165 thousand people bear Per in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled per.
- Where is Per most common?
- Per is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 62 people carrying it.
- How common is Per compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Per is the 16th most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
- Is Per a male or female name?
- Per 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 Per mean?
- Recorded meaning: For each, for every, per.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/perThe 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, “Per” — the 16th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.