Peter Family History

English, Scottish, German, Dutch, French (Alsace and Lorraine), Czech (Moravian), Slovak, Croatian, and Slovenian; Hungarian (Péter): from the personal name Peter (Greek Petros from petra ‘rock’). The personal name was popular throughout Christian Europe in the Middle Ages having been bestowed by Christ as a byname on the apostle Simon bar Jonah, the brother of Andrew.

The name was chosen by Christ for its symbolic significance (John 42, Matt. 118); Saint Peter is regarded as the founding head of the Christian Church in view of Christ's saying ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church’. In Christian Germany in the early Middle Ages, this was the most frequent personal name of non-ancient Germanic origin until the 14th century.

In North America, this surname has also absorbed cognates from other languages, for example Czech Petr, Polish Piotr and Pietr, Albanian Pjetri (from the personal name Pjetër, definite form Pjetri) and also their derivatives (see examples at Peterson).

It has also been adopted as a surname by Ashkenazic Jews.