Petronella
Petronella reached its high-water mark in 1916 at number 1,805, and has been recorded 335 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 1949. About 30 Petronellas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 82.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Petronella
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 335
- Estimated living today
- 30
- Median age today
- 82
- Peak year
- 1916
- Best rank
- 1,805th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1884
How old the living Petronellas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 335 babies given the name since 1884, about 30 are alive — 9 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1943 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 Petronellas
- Anna Petronella van Heerden (1887–1975)South African physician, first Afrikaner woman to qualify as a medical doctor
People named Petronella with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Petronella is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1916
The most popular girls’ names the year Petronella peaked:
Petronella 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Petronella | 65,264 | 208,163 |
| the Netherlands boys | Petronella | 16 | 5,933 |
| Finland girls | Petronella | 40 | 310 |
Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 5,933 who carry it, 16 go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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
Petronella 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.