Prētty
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Prētty is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English prety, preti, praty, prati, from Old English prættiġ (“tricky, crafty, sly, cunning, wily, astute”), from Proto-Germanic *prattugaz (“boastful, sly, slick, deceitful, tricky, cunni.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 18K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 49K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 221 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈25,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Pretty in ZA South Africa, US United States, NG Nigeria and 5 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishprety(measured from records)
- Old Englishprættiġ“tricky“tricky, crafty, sly, cunning, wily, astute”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*prattugaz“boastful“boastful, sly, slick, deceitful, tricky, cunning”(measured from records)
From Middle English prety, preti, praty, prati, from Old English prættiġ (“tricky, crafty, sly, cunning, wily, astute”), from Proto-Germanic *prattugaz (“boastful, sly, slick, deceitful, tricky, cunning”), corresponding to prat (“trick”) + -y. Cognate with Dutch prettig (“nice, pleasant”), Low German prettig (“funny”), Icelandic prettugur (“deceitful, tricky”). For the semantic development, compare canny, clever, cute.
Sources 4
- A dictionary of surnames
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Prētty 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #437 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Pretty | 53 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Pretty | 32 |
| CN China | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 447K | — | Pretty | 9 |
| CM Cameroon | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Pretty | 4 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Pretty | 37 |
| TN Tunisia | #531 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 6K | — | Pretty | 8 |
| GH Ghana | #694 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Pretty | 10 |
| US United States | — | 377 | 1 in 882K | 899 | Pretty | 221 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010. 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Prētty mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English prety, preti, praty, prati, from Old English prættiġ (“tricky, crafty, sly, cunning, wily, astute”), from Proto-Germanic *prattugaz (“boastful, sly, slick, deceitful, tricky, cunni… Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles and 2 other sources.
- Is Prētty a male or female name?
- Prētty is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Prētty have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Prētty in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pretty.
- How common is the name Prētty?
- In the United States, the national register counted 377 people named Prētty in 2020, about 1 in 882 thousand residents.
- How common is Prētty compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Prētty is the 437th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Prētty?
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/pr%C4%93ttyThe 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, “Prētty” — the 437th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.