Perna
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: leg (limb)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Perna is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 96K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 5.8K
- ITItaly≈1 in 6.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 297 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
leg (limb)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Perna is read(measured from records)
Perna is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English53%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Perna in English.
- Spanish19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Perna in Spanish.
- Italian9.6%
do lat. perna, concha marinha e pérola
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
- Portuguese5.1%
leg (limb)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Perna counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | ≈9,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Perna | 70 |
| CN China | ≈7,000 est. | ≈1 in 200K | — | Perna | 3 |
| US United States | 3,467 | 1 in 96K | 3.5K | Perna | 297 |
| BR Brazil | 2,390 | 1 in 89K | 2.4K | — | 2 |
| AR Argentina | 1,193 | 1 in 38K | 1.2K | — | 1 |
| UY Uruguay | 586 | 1 in 5.8K | 586 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 280 | 1 in 30K | 280 | Perna | 12 |
| IE Ireland | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Perna | 4 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Perna is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, A haunch or ham together with the leg, gammon.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, leg (lower limb of a human)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In izh, pancreas
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, spleen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Pietro Pernab. 1519ITItalian printer (fl. 1550-1582)
- Artur Pernab. 1881EEEstonian architect and military personnel (1881-1940)
- Raffaele Pernab. 1904ITItalian racing cyclist
- Noëlle Pernab. 1954FRFrench actress
- Gustave F. Pernab. 1960USU.S. military officer
- Martín Pernab. 1975USAmerican musician
- Dominic Pernab. 1977CACanadian ice hockey player
- Davide Pernab. 1979ITItalian astronomer
- Armando Pernab. 1981ITItalian footballer
- Fabio Pernab. 1986ITItalian footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 34 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.5K | #9,382 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.3K | #9,002 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.1K | #10,028 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.4K | #4,158 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.2K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 586 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 280 | #4,665 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Perna mean, and where does it come from?
- leg (limb) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Perna have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.7 thousand people named Perna in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled perna.
- Where is Perna most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Perna is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 5.8 thousand people — even though Italy holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Perna?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,467 people named Perna in 2010, about 1 in 96 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Perna?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pernaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Perna”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.