Piston
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A solid disk or cylinder that fits inside a hollow cylinder, and moves under pressure (as in an engine) or displaces fluid (as in a pump)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈpɪstən/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Piston is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Uruguay than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 4.5K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 331K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 410Kfew records
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.
- Uruguay (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 117 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
746 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A solid disk or cylinder that fits inside a hollow cylinder, and moves under pressure (as in an engine) or displaces fluid (as in a pump)
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Piston 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UY Uruguay | #934 | 746 | 1 in 4.5K | 746 | Piston | 14 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 413K | — | Piston | 13 |
| US United States | — | 180 | 1 in 1.8M | 191 | Piston | 117 |
| FR France | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 380K | 19 | Piston | 1 |
| ES Spain | — | 151 | 1 in 331K | 151 | Piston | 23 |
| AR Argentina | — | 101 | 1 in 450K | 101 | Piston | 19 |
746 people counted by INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Piston is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Finnish, genitive singular of pisto
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, PISTÓN, pistoane, s. n. 1. Organ de mașină care efectuează o mișcare alternativă de translație într-un cilindru în care se găsește un fluid sub presiune. 2. Instrument muzical de suflat din alamă, asemănător cu trompeta. ♦ Clapă mobilă care închide sau deschide un orificiu la unele instrumente muzicale de suflat.
as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology
In Latvian, Mūzikā, ventilis pūšamos instrumentos
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Bikšu pulksteņkabata
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Dzimumakts
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)- Joseph Pistonb. 1754FRFrench general during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1754–1831)
- Walter Pistonb. 1894USAmerican composer (1894–1976)
- Fernando Pistónresearcher
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 746 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 191 | #100,867 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 188 | #91,004 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 180 | #100,302 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 151 | #20,401 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 151 | #20,385 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 101 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 26 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 24 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 23 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 20 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 19 | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Piston mean, and where does it come from?
- A solid disk or cylinder that fits inside a hollow cylinder, and moves under pressure (as in an engine) or displaces fluid (as in a pump) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Piston?
- It depends on the language: in English /ˈpɪstən/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /pist̪on/; in French /pis.tɔ̃/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Piston have the most bearers?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted about 746 people named Piston, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled piston.
- Where is Piston most common?
- Piston is densest in Uruguay, where the national register counts about 1 in 4.5 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Piston?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted 746 people named Piston, about 1 in 4.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Piston compared with other names?
- In Uruguay, Piston is the 934th most common surname of 57,630 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Piston?
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/pistonThe 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, “Piston” — the 934th most common surname in Uruguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.