Pontian
loc · Malay · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Pontian is a name, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Malay and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: pope.
- GYGuyana1 in 750K◐
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.2M
- USUnited States1 in 868M
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈15 ●
- Sources
- 10 ●
- 1 in 750K ◐
across 2 countries
91 records
Official registry-verified
Guyana
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Pontianus in NL Netherlands.
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●
pope
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 4 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 14 | 0 rec. | 1 in 1.2M | 14 | Pontianus | 1 |
| US United States | 6 | 7 rec. | — | — | Pontian | 3 |
| GY Guyana | 1 | 0 rec. | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | 1 |
| VA Vatican City | — | — | — | 1 | — | — |
| FR France | — | — | — | listed | — | — |
Roughly 14 people in Netherlands bear this name (about 1 in 1.2M). 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●
- Malay63K71%
- Hindi611%
- Chinese371%
- Indonesian341%
- Vietnamese201%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Malay | 62,761 | 71% |
| Hindi | 61 | 1% |
| Chinese | 37 | 1% |
| Indonesian | 34 | 1% |
| Vietnamese | 20 | 1% |
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●
Pontian 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 English, The Pontic Greek dialect of the historical Pontus region of Asia Minor.
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.
Evidence●
Attested in 2 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
| FR France | Dictionary of French Prénoms (Benoist, 2009) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 2 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Pontian?
- We estimate roughly 15 people bear Pontian (counting its spellings and scripts) across 2 countries in our records.
- In which country does Pontian have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 14 people bear Pontian in the Netherlands, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled pontianus.
- Where is Pontian most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pontian is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 750 thousand people — even though Netherlands holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Pontian mean?
- Recorded meaning: pope
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pontianThe 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, “Pontian”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.