Paul
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from the male personal name Paul, from Latin Paulus, literally ‘small’ (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 96 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/pɑl/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Paul is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Czechia it is the 6th most common given name. Paul is also written Павел in Cyrillic, 바울 in Korean (Hangul) and Պավել in Armenian.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 110(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 140
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 150
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Paul itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #29 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 691 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 109 (inferred from the name graph)
1,331,639 named Paulo, 2022
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Paul in other scripts: Cyrillic, Korean (Hangul), Armenian and 4 more
(measured from records)Locally spelled Павел in RU Russia, BY Belarus, Paulo in BR Brazil and Pavel in CZ Czechia.
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.
How to pronounce Paul
- English:/pɑl/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- French:/pɔl/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from the male personal name Paul, from Latin Paulus, literally ‘small’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Paul is read
(measured from records)Paul is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English77%
from the male personal name Paul, from Latin Paulus, literally ‘small’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Latin paulus, ‘little’; Roman name of Saul, one of the foremost early Christians.
as a nameIrish first names
- French5.4%
From Latin Paulus ‘small’; used in the text as a baptismal name turned into patronymic surnames.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
From Latin Paulus ‘small, humble’; saint’s day listed twice (25 Jan., 29 Jun.)
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Paul, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Paul 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 1,331,639as Paulo | 1 in 159 | 1.4M | Paulo | 282 |
| RU Russia | #34 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 125 | register #16 | Павел | 283 |
| US United States | #22 | 907,225 | 1 in 367 | 906K | Paul | 691 |
| GB United Kingdom | #8 | ≈630,000 est. | ≈1 in 109 | 70K | Paul | 482 |
| NG Nigeria | #50 | ≈470,000 est. | ≈1 in 493 | — | Paul | 171 |
| CZ Czechia | #6 | 401,994as Pavel | 1 in 27 | 402K | Pavel | 222 |
| AU Australia | #10 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 140 | 1 | Paul | 389 |
| BY Belarus | #21 | ≈93,000 est. | ≈1 in 98 | 111 | Павел | 107 |
1,331,639 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); MVČR — living population register 2017; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE). 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)Paul is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Paul is a classic name of Latin origin meaning 'small' or 'humble'. It is famously associated with the Apostle Paul, a pivotal figure in early Christianity, known for his intellect, missionary zeal, and profound writings that form a large part of the New Testament. The name carries connotations of wisdom, resilience, and spiritual depth.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Saul is from the Hebrew שָׁאוּל (Sha'ûl), meaning 'asked for' or 'prayed for'. The name Paul is from the Latin surname Paulus, meaning 'small' or 'humble'. It was a common practice for Jews in the Roman Empire to have both a Hebrew and a Greco-Roman name.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)- Paul IIb. 1417ITpope of the Catholic Church from 1464 to 1471
- Paul Anthony Samuelsonb. 1915USAmerican economist (1915–2009)
- Paul Bergb. 1926USAmerican biochemist, Professor emeritus at Stanford University & Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1926–2023)
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)183 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 96 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Paul mean, and where does it come from?
- from the male personal name Paul, from Latin Paulus, literally ‘small’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people named Paul?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.3 million people named Paulo, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Russia, United States, United Kingdom and Nigeria; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Is Paul a male or female name?
- Paul is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 2024), Netherlands (Meertens NVB) and Ecuador (INEC, 2024), among others.
- What are other forms of the name Paul?
- In the etymology graph, Pablo, Saul and Paolo are forms of the same name in other languages; Paulie is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Paul?
- In the United States, the national register counted 907,225 people named Paul in 2020, about 1 in 367 residents.
- How common is Paul compared with other names?
- In Czechia, Paul is the 6th most common given name of 16,679 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Paul?
- It depends on the language: in English /pɑl/ (Wiktionary); in French /pɔl/ (Wiktionary).
What do you want to know about Paul?
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/paulThe 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, “Paul” — ranked 6th in Brazil (IBGE). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.