Peter
A masculine name of Greek origin meaning "rock".
Name Census estimates that about 410,601 living Americans carry the first name Peter. It sits at #192 in the overall ranking, outside the top 50 but still well-represented. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Peter today is around 53 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Peter births was 1957 (11,629 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Peter. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Peter with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Peter is used almost entirely for boys, the SSA data does show 1,943 girls registered with the name since 1880.
People living today
411K
~ 1 in 835 Americans
Peak year
1957
11,629 babies that year
Average age
53
years old
2024 SSA rank
#192
Tracked since 1880
Census
Peter in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 464,400 people with the first name Peter, which placed it at #99 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#99
National first-name rank
People counted
464K
464,400 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
153.8
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
80.9% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Peter
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Peter is White at 80.9%. The next largest groups are Asian/Pacific Islander (6.5%) and Hispanic (6.5%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Peter described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Peter at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White80.9% · 375,785
- Asian and Pacific Islander6.5% · 30,202
- Hispanic or Latino6.5% · 30,085
- Black or African American3.7% · 17,383
- Two or more races2.0% · 9,160
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.4% · 1,785
Gender
Gender distribution for Peter
Out of the 589,576 babies given the name Peter since 1880, 99.7% were registered as male. The name sits firmly on the male side of the spectrum, with only a handful of female registrations across the entire dataset.
Peter as a male name
- Ranked #192 in 2024
- 1,889 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1957 (11,604 births)
Peter as a female name
- Ranked #14,879 in 2022
- 6 female births in 2022
- Peak: 1980 (47 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Peter appears almost entirely male. Of the 464,396 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female.
Popularity
Peter: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Peter from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1950s, with 102,938 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1950s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Peter by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Peter during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
| Decade | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 4,656 | 6 | 4,662 |
| 1890s | 4,028 | 6 | 4,034 |
| 1900s | 4,376 | 6 | 4,382 |
| 1910s | 24,935 | 104 | 25,039 |
| 1920s | 34,068 | 204 | 34,272 |
| 1930s | 35,821 | 158 | 35,979 |
| 1940s | 69,328 | 183 | 69,511 |
| 1950s | 102,754 | 184 | 102,938 |
| 1960s | 92,411 | 268 | 92,679 |
| 1970s | 62,330 | 329 | 62,659 |
| 1980s | 56,725 | 358 | 57,083 |
| 1990s | 42,393 | 107 | 42,500 |
| 2000s | 26,131 | 24 | 26,155 |
| 2010s | 18,719 | 0 | 18,719 |
| 2020s | 8,958 | 6 | 8,964 |
Geography
Where Peters live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, California, Massachusetts recorded the most babies named Peter, while Wyoming, Arkansas, Nevada recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 11,255 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Peter
The name Peter is derived from the Greek word "Petros" which means "rock" or "stone". It dates back to ancient times and has its origins in the biblical figure of Saint Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ.
The name gained widespread popularity in the early days of Christianity. Saint Peter, originally known as Simon, was given the name Petros by Jesus, as mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. This symbolic renaming signified Peter's role as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built.
One of the earliest recorded instances of the name Peter can be found in the New Testament of the Bible. Peter, also known as Simon Peter or Cephas, was a prominent figure in the early Christian Church. He is considered the first Pope by the Roman Catholic Church and is revered as a saint by various Christian denominations.
Throughout history, the name Peter has been borne by numerous influential individuals. Some notable examples include:
1. Peter the Great (1672-1725), the famous Russian Tsar who transformed Russia into a major European power.
2. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), a renowned Flemish painter and one of the most influential artists of the Baroque era.
3. Peter the Hermit (c. 1050-1115), a Catholic priest and preacher who played a crucial role in initiating the First Crusade.
4. Saint Peter Claver (1580-1654), a Spanish Jesuit priest who dedicated his life to ministering to enslaved Africans in Cartagena, Colombia.
5. Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a medieval French philosopher, theologian, and one of the most influential thinkers of the 12th century.
The name Peter has been popular across various cultures and regions, with variations in spelling and pronunciation. In many Slavic languages, such as Russian and Polish, it is rendered as "Pyotr" or "Piotr". In Arabic, it is known as "Butrus" or "Bitrus". These variations showcase the widespread adoption and adaptation of the name throughout history.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Peter
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Peter Andre
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Peter Berg
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Peter Bogdanovich
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Peter Bondra
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Peter Boyle
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Peter Brook
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Peter Capaldi
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Peter Care
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Peter Cattaneo
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Peter Chan
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Peter Chung
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Peter Collinson
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Peter Cook
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Peter Coyote
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Peter Cushing
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Peter Defazio
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Peter Docter
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Peter Faiman
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Peter Falk
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Peter Fonda
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Peter Forsberg
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Peter Frampton
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Peter Gallagher
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Peter George
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Peter Graves
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Peter Greenaway
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Peter Hastings
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Peter Hedges
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Peter Hewitt
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Peter Horton
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Peter Howitt
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Peter Hunt
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Peter Hyams
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Peter Jackson
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Peter Krause
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Peter Lawford
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Peter Lord
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Peter Macnicol
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Peter Manoogian
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Peter Maris
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Peter Masterson
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Peter Medak
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Peter Mettler
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Peter Mullan
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Peter North
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Peter Ofallon
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Peter Ostrum
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Peter Otoole
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Peter Riegert
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Peter Roskam
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Peter Segal
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Peter Sellers
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Peter Warrick
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Peter Webber
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Peter Weir
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Peter Welch
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Peter Weller
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Peter Yates
People
Peter + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Peter as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with P
Other first names starting with P with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Peter: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Peter?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 410,601 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Peter going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 835 US residents.
Is Peter a common name?
We classify Peter as "Common". It ranks above 99.9% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 589,576 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Peter most popular?
The single biggest year for Peter was 1957, when 11,629 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Peter is about 53 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Peter in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 464,400 people with the name Peter, or 153.76 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #99 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Peter in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Peter?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Peter appears almost entirely male. Of the 464,396 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Peter?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Peter is White at 80.9%. The next largest groups are Asian/Pacific Islander (6.5%) and Hispanic (6.5%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Peter most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Peter in the 2020 Census, accounting for 80.9% (375,785 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Peter in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Peter a male name?
Yes, 99.7% of people registered as Peter in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Peter still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Peter in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Peter can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How common is the name Peter?
HowManyOfMe.org, our sister site, answers that with the living-bearer count in one glance.