Paul
Paul is a boy's name that peaked in 1957, when it was the 18th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 262nd. About 812,000 Pauls are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 59.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Paul boys named Paul
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,404,135
- Estimated living today
- 812,000
- Median age today
- 59
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 18th
- Rank in 2025
- 262nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 5,842 / 1,398,293
How old the living Pauls are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,404,135 babies given the name since 1880, about 812,000 are alive — 58 in every hundred. Roughly 32,000 of them are children and 296,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1966 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
from paulus (“small”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Pauls
- Paul the Apostle (5–66)Early Christian apostle and missionary (c. AD 5 – c. 64/65)
- Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)Flemish painter
- Paul McCartney (born 1942)English musician and member of the Beatles
- Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)French painter
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)French painter and printmaker
- Paul VI (1897–1978)pope of the Catholic Church from 1963 to 1978
- Paul Dirac (1902–1984)British theoretical physicist
- Paul Verlaine (1844–1896)French poet
People named Paul with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Paul is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Paul is most concentrated in Massachusetts (2.3×), Rhode Island (2.0×), Vermont (1.8×), New Hampshire (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular boys’ names the year Paul peaked:
Paul elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Paul | 431,335 | 12th |
| Ireland boys | Paul | 34,465 | 4th |
| New Zealand boys | Paul | 22,959 | 4th |
| Scotland boys | Paul | 21,108 | 3rd |
| Austria boys | Paul | 20,618 | 1st |
| England and Wales boys | Paul | 8,606 | 72nd |
| Norway boys | Paul | 4,291 | 67th |
| Switzerland boys | Paul | 2,185 | 44th |
| Belgium boys | Paul | 1,501 | 155th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Paul | 1,055 | 27th |
| Italy boys | Paul | 957 | — |
| Poland boys | Paul | 362 birth registrations | 174th |
| France girls | Paul | 155 | 4,626th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Paul: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Paul | 1,379 | 0.111% | 47th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Paul | 796 | 0.183% | 37th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Paul | 6 | 0.009% | 113th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Paul | 4 | 0.108% | 12th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Paul is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.21% of children were given it – 31 of them.
Paul: rank by region
In 2025, Paul was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Paul | 340 | 17 |
| Wallonia | Paul | 82 | 36 |
| Brussels | Paul | 153 | 8 |
In 2024, Paul was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano | Paul | 3 | 43 |
In 2022, Paul was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opolskie | Paul | 130 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Paul appears in the lists for Province of Liège (48th), Province of Namur (78th), Brussels-Capital Region (153rd), Province of Hainaut (174th), Province of Flemish Brabant (218th) and Province of East Flanders (226th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Paul by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 1,220 | 3rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Paul among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Paul | 28,623 | 53,617 |
| Finland boys | Paul | 1,734 | 3,345 |
| the Netherlands girls | Paul | — | 362 |
| Finland girls | Paul | — | 6 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Paul lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 5,019 men called Paul were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gipuzkoa | Paul | 593 | 1.655 | 116 |
| Bizkaia | Paul | 778 | 1.377 | 128 |
| Teruel | Paul | 32 | 0.461 | 230 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Paul | 419 | 0.417 | 238 |
| Málaga | Paul | 250 | 0.286 | 265 |
| Araba/Álava | Paul | 48 | 0.285 | 345 |
Listed in 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Paul against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.