Pretorius
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Andries, S. African colonizer
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɹiːtʰɒɹiəs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pretorius is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 665(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 27K
- NONorway1 in 27K
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
- 45 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 665 (inferred from the name graph)
≈85,000 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)
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)
Andries, S. African colonizer
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pretorius 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 | #253 | ≈85,000 est. | ≈1 in 665 | — | Pretorius | 43 |
| CN China | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 969K | — | Pretorius | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 137K | 330 | Pretorius | 9 |
| US United States | — | 410 | 1 in 811K | 577 | Pretorius | 25 |
| NO Norway | — | 200 | 1 in 27K | 200 | — | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Pretorius | 8 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | Pretorius | 33 |
| OM Oman | — | ≈45 est. | ≈1 in 103K | — | Pretorius | 5 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Pretorius is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Afrikaans, From Latin "praetor," meaning magistrate; namesake of Pretoria.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
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)
- Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretoriusb. 1798ZASouth African politician (1798–1853)
- Jackie Pretoriusb. 1934ZASouth African racing driver
- Giovanni Pretoriusb. 1972ZASouth African boxer
- Frans Pretoriusb. 1973ZAphysicist
- Dewald Pretoriusb. 1977ZASouth African cricketer
- Selwynb. 1982AUnot in their usual nameAustralian singer (1982-)
- An-Li Pretoriusb. 1987ZAcyclist
- Tiaan Pretoriusb. 2001ZASouth African rugby player (born 2001)
- Angelique PretoriusZASouth African actress
- Albert PretoriusZASouth African actor
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)
Attested in 24 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 577 | #40,800 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 410 | #50,851 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 330 | #15,333 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 290 | #64,186 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 200 | #7,875 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
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 Pretorius mean, and where does it come from?
- Andries, S. African colonizer Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Pretorius?
- A machine transcription gives /pɹiːtʰɒɹiəs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pretorius have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 85 thousand people named Pretorius in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pretorius.
- How common is the name Pretorius?
- In the United States, the national register counted 410 people named Pretorius in 2010, about 1 in 811 thousand residents.
- How common is Pretorius compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Pretorius is the 253rd most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pretorius?
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/pretoriusThe 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, “Pretorius” — the 253rd most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.