Paula
About 281,769 American babies have been named Paula since 1880, most of them around 1963. In 2025 it ranked 853rd. About 223,000 Paulas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Paula boys named Paula
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 281,769
- Estimated living today
- 223,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1963
- Best rank
- 42nd
- Rank in 2025
- 853rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 280,856 / 913
How old the living Paulas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 281,769 babies given the name since 1880, about 223,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 6,200 of them are children and 101,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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
feminine form of Paulus (“Paul”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Paulas
- Paula Abdul (born 1962)American singer, dancer, choreographer, actress, and television personality
- Paula Fernandes (born 1984)Brazilian singer-songwriter
- Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907)German expressionist painter
- Paula Patton (born 1975)American actress
- Paula-Mae Weekes (born 1958)President of Trinidad and Tobago
- Paula Hitler (1896–1960)younger sister of Adolf Hitler
- Paula Radcliffe (born 1973)English long-distance runner
- Paula Hawkins (born 1972)British writer
People named Paula with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Paula is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Paula is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.3×), Massachusetts (2.0×), Maine (1.5×), Oklahoma (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1963
The most popular girls’ names the year Paula peaked:
Paula elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain girls | Paula | 103,502 | 3rd |
| France girls | Paula | 7,110 | 186th |
| Ireland girls | Paula | 5,462 | 15th |
| Poland girls | Paula | 3,937 birth registrations | 65th |
| New Zealand girls | Paula | 3,667 | 15th |
| Austria girls | Paula | 3,626 | 39th |
| Scotland girls | Paula | 2,575 | 54th |
| Switzerland girls | Paula | 1,494 | 93rd |
| England and Wales girls | Paula | 967 | 761st |
| Norway girls | Paula | 820 | 212th |
| Italy girls | Paula | 337 | — |
| Belgium girls | Paula | 329 | 308th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Paula | 84 | 172nd |
| France boys | Paula | 5 | 2,010th |
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.
Paula: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Paula | 1,412 | 0.113% | 72nd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Paula | 67 | 0.015% | 253rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Paula | 7 | 0.011% | 109th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Paula | 8 | 0.215% | 3rd |
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, Paula is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.25% of children were given it – 94 of them.
Paula: rank by region
In 2025, Paula was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Paula | 287 | 19 |
| Wallonia | Paula | 300 | 9 |
In 2024, Paula was among the 10 most common names in 5 regions of Spain. It has come first somewhere in 10 different years.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aragón | Paula | 8 | 47 |
| Illes Balears | Paula | 7 | 57 |
| Castilla - La Mancha | Paula | 6 | 109 |
| Extremadura | Paula | 5 | 64 |
| Comunidad de Madrid | Paula | 7 | 282 |
In 2025, Paula was given 2 times or more in 6 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Paula | 234 | 2 |
| Łódzkie | Paula | 188 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Paula | 244 | 4 |
| Śląskie | Paula | 219 | 3 |
| Wielkopolskie | Paula | 191 | 4 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Paula | 175 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Paula appears in the lists for Province of Liège (157th), Province of East Flanders (171st) and Province of Antwerp (276th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain 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.
Paula by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 619 | 18th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Paula 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Paula | 16,656 | 18,311 |
| the Netherlands girls | Paula | 7,181 | 12,880 |
| the Netherlands boys | Paula | — | 157 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Paula lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 179,475 women called Paula were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pontevedra | Paula | 4,737 | 9.658 | 13 |
| Cantabria | Paula | 2,890 | 9.439 | 14 |
| Asturias | Paula | 4,731 | 8.916 | 15 |
| Valladolid | Paula | 2,368 | 8.730 | 19 |
| Coruña, A | Paula | 5,068 | 8.575 | 16 |
| Valencia/València | Paula | 11,878 | 8.417 | 18 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Paula 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.