From Latin 'pax' meaning 'peace,' used as both a given name and surname in Italian and English.
Pace derives from the Latin pax, pacis, meaning "peace" — the same root that gives English the words pacific, pacify, and pacifist. As a given name it has ancient echoes: Pax was the Roman goddess of peace, honored with her own temple on the Palatine Hill, and pax became one of the most resonant words in the Christian liturgy — the peace exchanged between worshippers, the peace of the benediction. The English surname Pace, from which the given name is often borrowed, traces back through medieval French to the same Latin root, carried by families who may have lived near a peace boundary or who bore the word as a byname.
As a given name, Pace has remained rare and quietly distinctive. It appears in literary fiction as a character name chosen for its loaded symbolism — a person named Pace inhabits the tension between the word's meaning and the world's reality in interesting ways. It has also been used in the American South as both a surname-turned-first-name and an independent given name, part of the rich Southern tradition of names that carry family or place associations.
In contemporary naming, Pace fits neatly into the growing appetite for short, single-syllable names that feel both modern and rooted: names like Blaise, Cruz, Heath, or Blythe. Its meaning is immediately positive without being saccharine, and its sound is clean and confident. It works equally well on any gender, which has become increasingly important to parents seeking names that don't perform traditional expectations. For parents who want a name that quietly carries an entire philosophy in four letters, Pace is an inspired choice.