Per
The boy's name Per has been in the national records since 1923, with 369 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 2020. About 310 Pers are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Per
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 369
- Estimated living today
- 310
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1963
- Best rank
- 2,200th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1923
How old the living Pers are
born that year still alive today
Of the 369 babies given the name since 1923, about 310 are alive — 85 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Pers
- Per Mertesacker (born 1984)German association football player
- Per Albin Hansson (1885–1946)Swedish politician, Prime Minister of Sweden between 1932–1936 and 1936–1946
- Per Olov Enquist (1934–2020)Swedish writer
- Per Teodor Cleve (1840–1905)Swedish chemist who discovered holmium and thulium
- Per Gessle (born 1959)Swedish musician and songwriter
- Per Petterson (born 1952)Norwegian novelist
- Per "Dead" Ohlin (1969–1991)Swedish vocalist
- Per Borten (1913–2005)25th Prime Minister of Norway
People named Per with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Names of 1963
The most popular boys’ names the year Per peaked:
Per elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Per | 34,953 | 2nd |
| Sweden boys | Per | 130 | 94th |
| Belgium boys | Per | 17 | 1,238th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Per: rank by region
In 2012, Per was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Per | 772 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Per by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Per among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Per | 1,059 | 1,718 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Per against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.