Spanish & Portuguese2 syllablesName day 29 June
Meaning: rock; stone.
Pedro
| Origin | Spanish and Portuguese form of Peter, from the Greek Petros — the name given to the fisherman Simon |
|---|---|
| Meaning | "Rock". Greek petros, stone, renders the Aramaic kepha, the word behind the New Testament's Cephas |
| Pronunciation | PEH-droh, with a single tapped r |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; one of the commonest men's names in Portugal and Brazil, and an old standard in Mexico |
| Variants | Peter, Pierre, Pietro, Petros, Pere (Catalan), Piotr, Pyotr |
| Nicknames | Pedrito, Perico, Peyo; Pete for English speakers |
| Name day | 29 June, the feast of San Pedro y San Pablo |
History & meaning
The name begins as a joke about a man's character. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus renames Simon with the Aramaic kepha, rock, and the Greek text preserves the pun by pairing Petros with petra. Latin wrote it Petrus, and Spanish applied one of its most regular sound changes — a t between vowels softening to d, the same shift that turned vita into vida and catena into cadena — to arrive at Pedro. The pun survived the journey: piedra, the everyday Spanish word for stone, comes from the same Latin root, so a Spanish speaker hears the wordplay that an English reader has to be told about.
In Mexico the name belongs to the countryside and to the cinema. Pedro Infante was the defining star of the Golden Age, and his death in a 1957 plane crash near Mérida is still commemorated. Juan Rulfo published Pedro Páramo in 1955, a short novel about a dead town that reshaped Latin American fiction, and readers have long noted that the title itself is a verdict: Pedro, stone, and páramo, barren upland. Neither association makes the name heavy. It stayed ordinary, which is the point of it.
Why parents choose it
Pedro is two syllables that survive American paperwork without a single alteration — no accent to lose, no letter to explain, no respelling to defend. It reads as unpretentious in both languages and old in the way a family name is old rather than the way a trend is old. It also sits well after a long surname, where a compact given name does most of the work.
Middle names for Pedro
The clipped ending pairs best with something that opens up: Pedro Andrés, Pedro Ignacio, Pedro Julián, Pedro Emiliano. Pedro Pablo is the traditional Mexican compound, borrowed straight from the 29 June feast. See the middle names guide for the general method.
Famous Pedros
Pedro Infante sang and acted his way through more than fifty films and is still the measure of Mexican stardom. Pedro Armendáriz worked for Emilio Fernández at home and John Ford in Hollywood, one of the few actors to be first-rank in both industries. Pedro Vargas, the tenor billed as El Samurai de la Canción, carried Mexican song on radio for half a century.
Consider instead
Peter is the English form, plainer and currently underused. Pablo is the other half of the 29 June pairing and has more artistic weight attached. Santiago is the apostle name that Spanish made entirely its own.