Per
Fewer than 150 Polish men carry Per, and no boy has been registered with it since at least 2000: most Poles will never meet one. It reached Poland from Greek through Scandinavia, sharing Peter's root meaning "rock, stone".
Per Pronunciation
Per is pronounced PER (/pɛr/).
What Per means
Where Per comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Per comes from the Greek Petros, which meant rock or stone. Peter carried that word into Christian Europe, and the Nordic languages filed it down to one hard syllable. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Per became one of the plainest men's names on any register.
The stone was there from the start. In the Gospel, Simon is renamed the rock on which a church will stand, and Per keeps that old pun in miniature. The name says little and holds firm.
Scandinavian bearers made it their own. The mathematician Per Enflo solved a problem from the Scottish Book in 1972, and Stanisław Mazur paid the promised prize: a live goose. A short name did large work. In Norwegian records Per still sits among the common names, three letters that once meant stone.
How many people are named Per
1 in 162948 men in Poland is named Per. 131 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2905 among male names.
Per as a middle name
Per is a first name for 131 men in Poland and a middle name for another 19, an 87/13 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2082nd, between Ndubuisi (19) and Petro (19).
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#2080 Nathanael19
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#2081 Ndubuisi19
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#2082 Per19
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#2083 Petro19
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#2084 Pinhas19