Petro
The Ukrainian form of Peter, from the Greek for "rock". Around 14,000 people in Poland carry it, nearly all of them men, and it stays uncommon enough that meeting one sticks with you.
Petro Pronunciation
Petro is pronounced PET-ro (/ˈpɛtrɔ/).
What Petro means
Where Petro comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Petro traces back to the Greek petros, a word for rock or stone. It is the Ukrainian form of the name Poland knows as Piotr, and a Polish ear hears Ukraine in it at once. The meaning stays plain across languages: skała, kamień, something you can stand on.
The Greek petra sat behind an old promise about foundations, and the name kept that solidity as it moved east through the Orthodox church. Ukrainian carried it into everyday life, onto its calendars and into its villages. The seventeenth-century Cossack hetman Petro Doroshenko bore it. A Petro grows up answering to a word that means the ground itself.
In a Polish school register today, a Petro is usually a child whose family came from across the eastern border. The teacher reads the name and the class hears where it belongs.
No pet forms come attached here. Petro stands on its own. And it keeps saying what petros said in Greek: stone.
How many people are named Petro
1 in 1546 men in Poland is named Petro. 13,808 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #319 among male names.
Petro's popularity over time
4 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1129 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2021. Still the #319 name among living men, even as it slips to #1129 among newborns.
Petro as a middle name
Petro is a first name for 13,808 men in Poland and a middle name for another 19, a 100/0 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2083rd, between Per (19) and Pinhas (19).
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#2081 Ndubuisi19
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#2082 Per19
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#2083 Petro19
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#2084 Pinhas19
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#2085 Qasim19