Boy names that mean stone
Two unrelated traditions did almost all the work here. Aramaic kepha, rock, became a Greek nickname for a fisherman and then a name in forty languages; Old Norse steinn got bolted onto half the Scandinavian name stock. Everything else on this list is a bonus.
- PeterPEE-terGreek
Rock. Greek petros translates the Aramaic nickname Kepha, which is the point of the joke in Matthew 16.
- PedroPEH-drohSpanish
Rock — Peter in Spanish and Portuguese, and one of the commonest names in the history of both.
- PietroPYEH-trohItalian
Rock; the Italian Peter, and the name on the door of St Peter's.
- PieterPEE-terDutch
Rock — the Dutch form, with the stress dropped forward.
- PetroPET-roUkrainian
Stone, rock — the Ukrainian Peter.
- PiercePEERSSNorman
The same word as Peter, arriving through Norman French Piers.
- KepaKEH-pahBasque
Rock — Basque took Peter back to the Aramaic kepha rather than through Latin.
- BoutrosBOOT-rossCoptic
Rock: the Arabic and Coptic Peter, standard among Egyptian Christians.
- StenSTAYNSwedish
Stone — the plain vocabulary word, used as a name with nothing added.
- SteinarSTAY-narNorse
Stone warrior: steinn (stone) + herr (army, host).
- TorstenTOR-stenNorse
Thor's stone — the thunder god's name fixed to the hardest noun available.
- JosteinYOO-staynNorwegian
Horse-stone, from Old Norse jór and steinn.
- ØysteinOY-staynNorwegian
Stone of good fortune — ey + steinn, though ey is also read as ever or as island.
- SixtenSIKS-tenSwedish
Victory stone — sigr + steinn.
- HalvorHAL-vorNorwegian
Rock-guard: hallr (rock, slab) + varðr (warden) — a guardian as immovable as stone.
- MasonMAY-sunEnglish
Stoneworker, stonecutter — the trade name, and currently #39 in the U.S.
- StanleySTAN-leeEnglish
Stony clearing, from stān + lēah: the field you could not plough.
- SeokjinSUHK-jinKorean
The hanja decide; 石, stone, is one of the two standard first characters, set against 珍, treasure.
- LeiLAYChinese
磊 — three stones stacked: a cairn, and from there openness and integrity of character.
- TenochTEH-nochNahuatl
Stone prickly pear: te-, stone, plus the cactus fruit. The founding image of Tenochtitlan.
- Itzcóatleets-KOH-atlNahuatl
Obsidian serpent — itztli is volcanic glass, the stone the Aztecs made blades from.
Rock, stone, and the stone you work
The Peter family. Peter exists because Jesus renamed a fisherman Rock, and the pun survived translation into every Christian language: Pedro, Pietro, Pieter, Petro, Pierce, Boutros. Kepa is the interesting one — Basque skipped the Greek and took the Aramaic word directly.
The Norse steinn. Old Norse used stone as a second element the way English uses -son, and the results are still in daily use across Scandinavia: Sten alone, Steinar, Torsten, Sixten, Jostein, Øystein, Halvor. Each pairs stone with something else — a god, a horse, luck, victory — and the stone supplies the hardness.
Worked and named stone. Mason cuts it, Stanley farms around it, Lei piles it into a cairn, and Itzcóatl and Tenoch name particular Mesoamerican stones — obsidian, and the rock a cactus grows out of. Seokjin is the East Asian entry, and like most Korean names it depends on which characters the family registers. For bigger rock, see mountain.