Male name
Percival
373 births (England and Wales, 1996–2025), peaking in 2025. Expression number: 5.
Origin
From Old French Perceval, name of a knight in a twelfth century Arthurian romance by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes. Shaped like Old French percier (“pierce”) + val (“valley”), but probably representing some Gaulish or Old Welsh name, possibly related to Welsh Peredur, from ber (“spear, lance”) (from Middle Welsh ber, from Proto-Brythonic *ber, from Proto-Celtic *beru (“spit”)) + dur (“hard metal, steel”) (see Latin durus). Cognate with German Parzival and Parsifal.From Wiktionary, entry “Percival”, text under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Do you know a Percival?
Send them the page about their name.
How many babies received it
From the official birth registers.
In England and Wales
Peak in 2025: 47 births. 373 births from 1996 to 2025. A name given mostly in the 2020s. It really came into use around 2018. It is still given: 187 births from 2021 to 2025.
Source: Office for National Statistics, Baby names in England and Wales, Open Government Licence v3.0.
The numbers of the name
Each letter has a value: A = 1, B = 2… I = 9, then J = 1 again (Pythagorean method). We add them up, then reduce to a single digit, except 11, 22 and 33.
■ vowel · ■ consonant
Expression
All the letters: talents, the way you act.
5
freedom, change, movement
7 + 5 + 9 + 3 + 9 + 4 + 1 + 3 = 41 → 5
Soul
The vowels: what drives you deep down.
6
responsibility, harmony, commitment to others
5 + 9 + 1 = 15 → 6
Personality
The consonants: what others notice first.
8
power, achievement, your relationship with money
7 + 9 + 3 + 4 + 3 = 26 → 8
- Digits missing from the name
- 2, 6, 8
- Most frequent digit
- 3 · expression, creativity, sociability
The meaning of the numbers comes from numerological tradition; it isn't a measure of your personality. A full portrait needs your first and middle names, your last name at birth, and your date of birth. How we calculate
Your name and theirs
The number of each name, and the number of the bond, which comes from adding them together. A symbolic game: what your two names say together, to be read as a metaphor, not as a verdict on your relationship.