Buls

surname · Latin script

Meaning: liels karstums, tveice (skaidrā, sausā laikā); dūmakains, tveicīgs, spiedīgs gaiss; bula

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/bəɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Buls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.1M(measured from records)
  • LVLatvia≈1 in 6.3K
  • BEBelgium1 in 88K

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.

United States (measured from records)

297 people, 2010

Sources
118 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Latvia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

recorded in Latvian

liels karstums, tveice (skaidrā, sausā laikā); dūmakains, tveicīgs, spiedīgs gaiss; bula

Sources 1

  • Tēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Buls 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.

Where Buls is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2971 in 1.1M297Buls118
LV Latvia≈300 est.≈1 in 6.3K—Buls12
DE Germany≈170 est.≈1 in 464K—Buls39
BE Belgium1331 in 88K133Buls16
NL Netherlands1121 in 154K112Buls10
NO Norway141 in 391K14—1
EE Estonia≈4 est.≈1 in 351Klisted——

297 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Buls is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Chile, Cuba

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Buļs

  • Latvian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Latvia, United Kingdom, United States, Norway

    Also written Buļs

  • Russian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Булс, Buļs

26 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Buls 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.

  • In pau, the moonfish: Platax orbicularis

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In pau, moonfish

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

18001850190019502000Karel Buls, b. 1837Jānis Buls, b. 1950Jānis Buls, b. 1959
  • Karel Bulsb. 1837BEBelgian politician (1837-1914)
  • Jānis Bulsb. 1950LV(1950-12-14) mathematician, lecturer. Born in Riga (Latvia)
  • Jānis Bulsb. 1959(1959-12-11) photographer

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)

FormalDear Buls,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Buls
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010297#66,553
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020277#75,111
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000245#73,659
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008133#12,207
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007112#17,444
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—14#50,081
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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

How do you pronounce Buls?
A machine transcription gives /bəɫz/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Buls mean?
Recorded meaning: liels karstums, tveice (skaidrā, sausā laikā); dūmakains, tveicīgs, spiedīgs gaiss; bula
In which country does Buls have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 297 people named Buls, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled buls.
How common is the name Buls?
In the United States, the national register counted 297 people named Buls in 2010, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.

What do you want to know about Buls?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/buls

The 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, “Buls”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Buls parses inside a full name →