Petru
Fewer than 700 men in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met a Petru, and no boys were given it last year. The name goes back to the Greek for "rock" or "stone", the same root behind Peter.
Petru Pronunciation
Petru is pronounced PET-roo (/ˈpɛtru/).
What Petru means
Where Petru comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Petru begins in Greek, in the word petros, which means a rock or a stone. It travels east into the Romance world, where Romanian and Aromanian speakers made it their form of the name we know in Poland as Piotr. The meaning stays put across every border it crosses. Rock. Stone.
The Greek petra sits behind the Latin petra and the English petrify, so a Petru shares a root with the very idea of turning solid. In Poland the name arrives as a guest, brought by neighbors to the south and east rather than grown at home. On a school register it looks foreign next to the Piotrs, and that difference is the point.
A short name. Two syllables and done.
What it has meant to the people who carry it is difficulty made durable. A stone does not move when pushed. Petru names that plainly, without decoration, the way its Greek source named a rock and nothing more.
How many people are named Petru
1 in 33146 men in Poland is named Petru. 644 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1173 among male names.
Petru's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been climbing since 2025.
Petru as a middle name
Petru is a first name for 644 men in Poland and a middle name for another 21, a 97/3 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1938th, between Panagiotis (21) and Phong (21).
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#1936 Olimpiusz21
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#1937 Panagiotis21
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#1938 Petru21
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#1939 Phong21
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#1940 Péter21