The history of your name

The PETER surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 8,662 3758 0.003 32
United States (1880 census) 4,334 1431 0.009 87
Change since 1880 +4328 -2327 -0.006 -55
Other Countries
Australia 518 3109 0.003 32
United Kingdom 0 0
Top States for PETER by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 915 3146 0.003 27
New York 772 2224 0.004 41
Florida 509 3736 0.003 32
Illinois 476 2488 0.004 38
Michigan 373 2895 0.004 38
Top States for PETER by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Alaska 180 344 0.029 287
Maine 131 1674 0.010 103
Minnesota 370 1422 0.008 75
Iowa 197 1709 0.007 67
Vermont 37 2548 0.006 61

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called PETER live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called PETER represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called PETER in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a PETER by picking someone at random in Alaska than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of PETER

Region of origin: Europe

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Ethnic distribution of PETER in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 609 7.03
Asian/Pacific 587 6.78
Native American/Alaskan 321 3.71
White (Hispanic) 221 2.55
Mixed Race 179 2.07
White (Caucasian) 6,745 77.87

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the PETER surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of PETER in historical publications

PETER. The Christian name, introduced here at the Conquest. It has become the parent of many surnames, as Peters, Peterson, Piers, Pierce, Pearse, Pearce, Pears, Peers, Pierson, Pearson, Peterken, Perkin, Perkins, Purkess and Purkis, Perk, Pyrke, Perks, Perkes, Park, Parks, Parkes, Parkin, Parkyn, Parkins, Parkinson, and perhaps Person and Parsons.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to PETER

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PETER.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for PETER

The following words are slight variants of PETER that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.