Petrina
Feminine · “rock”
The name behind this one is a pun, and the pun does not quite work in the language it was written in. Greek has two words for rock: one masculine, meaning a stone you could pick up, and one feminine, meaning a mass of bedrock. The famous line uses the masculine for the man and the feminine for what is built on.
How old is the name Petrina?
Petrina first appears in US birth records in 1900 — 125 years ago. The typical Petrina alive today was born around 1970, making them about 55 years old. About 1,600 people named Petrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Petrina most popular?
Petrina peaked in 1971, reaching #1164 nationally. See the whole 1971 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From petros to Petrina
The story of Petrina
That grammatical wobble has been argued over for fifteen centuries and it matters more than it sounds, because a great deal of institutional authority has been rested on the sentence. The Aramaic the words are usually assumed to translate has only one form and no such distinction, which is either evidence that the pun was seamless in the original or evidence that the Greek is doing something the Aramaic did not. Both readings have distinguished defenders. What is not in doubt is that a man was given a nickname meaning rock, that it displaced his actual name entirely, and that nobody now remembers what he was called before.
Meaning
rock
The masculine Greek word, given a Latin feminine ending. The apostle's own name was Aramaic and meant the same thing; the Greek is a translation rather than a borrowing, which is unusual for a personal name.
How the name formed
- petros
- Petrus
- Petrina
Related forms: Pietrina · Petrine · Petra
Pronouncing Petrina
puh-TREE-nuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The opening is unstressed and reduces, which is why the first vowel is barely audible.
Nicknames for Petrina
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1900
- Most girls named
- 197085 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1164reached in 1971
- Change vs 2005
- +50.0%9 in 2011, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Petrina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Pietrina in Italian — same name
- Petrine in Danish — same name
- Petra in Spanish — related form
Petrinas among us
people named Petrina are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Petrina sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Trina sits inside it as a completely established short form.
- The meaning is concrete and unusually solid for a woman's name.
- It is rare in English while being entirely ordinary in Scandinavia and Italy.
- Petra is commoner in English and will be substituted.
- The front syllable collides with an ordinary English word when clipped.
- The generation that used it in America is now elderly.
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What they receive
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Petrina
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Petrinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,600 people named Petrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Petrina in 2025?
- Petrina is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Petrina with classmates?
- Petrina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More P names
The most-given names starting with P, all years combined.
Patricia#1334 · Pamela#2239 · Phyllis#11932 · Peggy#8362 · Paula#853 · Pauline#2957 · Pearl#776 · Paige#346
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Petrina? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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