Peristedion is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Peristediidae, the armoured gurnards or armored sea robins.

In 1826 Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent designated P. marmalat as the type species of the genus.

[1][2] P. marmalat is now treated as a junior synonym of Carl Linnaeus's Trigla cataphracta, which he described from the Mediterranean Sea off southern France.

[3] The name of the genus Peristedion is a combination of peri, meaning "around", and stedion, which is a diminutive of stethos, which is Greek for "breast" or "chest", an allusion to the bony plates lining the underside of the body, similar to a plastron, the feature Lacépède use to distinguish Peristidion from Trigla.

[8] The smallest species in the genus is P. paucibarbiger, which has a maximum published standard length of 7 cm (2.8 in).