Péter
Only around 135 Polish men carry it, few enough that most people here have never met one. The name comes from Greek, where it means rock or stone.
Péter Pronunciation
Péter is pronounced PÉTER (/pétɛr/).
What Péter means
Where Péter comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Péter grows from the Greek Petros, and Petros grows from petra, the word for rock or stone. The apostle got the name as a nickname. Simon the fisherman was called the rock, and the Greek Gospels rendered that as Petros. The meaning here is the literal one. Rock, stone, skała, kamień, all sit at the root, none of them a later gloss.
For centuries the name has belonged first to that fisherman, the man Christian tradition places at the founding of the Church. His feast falls on 29 June, shared with Paul, and Peters across Europe mark it as their day. No pope has ever taken the name again, a small measure of how heavy it sits.
Open a Polish class register and an accented Péter points to a family with a border in it, Hungarian most likely, since Hungarian keeps that é. A short name. It fills a form at the urząd without crowding the line. Whatever language spells it, the root underneath holds one word, petra, the rock.
How many people are named Péter
1 in 158120 men in Poland is named Péter. 135 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2854 among male names.
Péter as a middle name
Péter is a first name for 135 men in Poland and a middle name for another 21, an 87/13 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1940th, between Phong (21) and Raimund (21).
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#1938 Petru21
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#1939 Phong21
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#1940 Péter21
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#1941 Raimund21
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#1942 Rajnhard21