Petter

given name · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script

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

Petter is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country. In Norway it is the 80th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and Finnish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from OFr peter ‘to break wind’; first attested John le Petour 1299 LLB B.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 540◐
  • SESweden1 in 983
  • FIFinland1 in 3.1K

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

≈23K ●

across 10 countries

Sources
125 ●

17K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 540 ◐

Norway

Meaning & origin●

from OFr peter ‘to break wind’; first attested John le Petour 1299 LLB B

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Petter is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#24210,379△3.2K rec.1 in 98310KPetter91
NO Norway#8010,1189.9K rec.1 in 54036KPetter125
FI Finland#5631,825△132 rec.1 in 3.1K6.9KPetter31
BR Brazil—462—1 in 458K462——
US United States—3751.5K rec.1 in 887K658Petter117
GB United Kingdom—213153 rec.——Petter32
PH Philippines—212202 rec.——Petter8
GH Ghana#542208169 rec.——Petter10
IN India—165286 rec.—39Petter16
PE Peru—11297 rec.——Petter10
NL Netherlands—86135 rec.1 in 201K571Petter17
DK Denmark—8086 rec.1 in 73K80Petter55

Roughly 10K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 983). 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●

  • Norwegian Bokmål36K33%
  • Finnish23K21%
  • Norwegian16K14%
  • Portuguese7.6K7%
  • Spanish5.9K5%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Norwegian Bokmål36,36833%
Finnish22,99221%
Norwegian15,63914%
Portuguese7,6197%
Spanish5,8845%

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◐

Petter is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name23K records spelled Petter8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, Sweden, Brazil

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Pêťťêř

  • Portuguese given name22K records spelled Petter9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Pëttër, Pețtęr, Pêttêr

  • Chinese given name3.9K records spelled Petter2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Taiwan, Finland, China

  • a separate given name1.2K records spelled Petter2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden, India

    Also written Pettér

  • Russian surname462 records spelled Petter6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Norway, Ukraine, Sweden

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Петтер, Пёттер

48 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●

Petter is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, Petter är en nordisk form av → Petrus. Formen blev vanlig först på 1700-talet i Sverige. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 29 juni.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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●

01002003001960198020002020270 · 1990

Show as table
Petter in SSB — Navn (1880–present), Norway, 1945–2025
Yearrecords
194556
194681
194771
194871
194982
195091
195186
1952100
1953118
1954124
1955114
1956115
1957145
1958133
1959137
1960135
1961146
1962138
1963145
1964137
1965141
1966153
1967168
1968131
1969161
1970145
1971150
1972153
1973176
1974146
1975126
1976136
1977131
1978131
1979147
1980140
1981115
1982142
1983148
1984145
1985185
1986169
1987176
1988192
1989234
1990270
1991241
1992210
1993231
1994258
1995251
1996222
1997217
1998165
1999185
2000158
2001143
2002143
2003155
2004165
2005124
2006119
2007117
2008119
200992
201089
201187
201278
201384
201466
201577
201669
201763
201844
201958
202036
202140
202235
202328
202432
202537

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●

16001700180019002000Petter Dass, b. 1647Petter Adolf Karsten, b. 1834Hans Petter Moland, b. 1955Petter Berg, b. 1956Petter Næss, b. 1960Jonas Berggren, b. 1967Petter Solberg, b. 1974Petter Hansson, b. 1976Måns Zelmerlöw, b. 1986Petter Northug Jr., b. 1986

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 55 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Petter
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—36K#104
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—10K#391
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202110K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202510K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—6.9K#507
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20205.4K—
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—1.8K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020658#36,570
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000654#33,020
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010583#38,050
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007571#3,330
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022462—

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 · 429 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Petter?
We estimate roughly 23 thousand people bear Petter (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Petter have the most bearers?
We estimate about 10 thousand people bear Petter in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled petter.
Where is Petter most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Petter is densest in Norway — about 1 in 540 people — even though Sweden holds more of our records for it.
How common is Petter compared with other names?
In Sweden, Petter is the 242nd most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
Is Petter a male or female name?
Petter 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 Petter mean?
Recorded meaning: from OFr peter ‘to break wind’; first attested John le Petour 1299 LLB B
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/petter

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, “Petter” — the 242nd most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Petter parses inside a full name →