The name Paul means ‘the little one’ or also ‘the younger one’. It comes from the Latin word ‘paulus’, which means ‘small’ or ‘the little one’.
Paul is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Paul isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Paul ranks 214. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 10 were named Paul. In total, there are currently 1,362,117 people – children, adults and seniors – named Paul living in the United States, which is approximately 0.41 % of the entire population.
The name Paul means ‘the little one’ or also ‘the younger one’. It comes from the Latin word ‘paulus’, which means ‘small’ or ‘the little one’.
Paul the Apostle... was a Christian apostle and missionary who spread the teachings of Jesus. He is said to have lived from about 5 to 65 AD.
Paul is the epitome of perseverance. Every year since first names have been registered in the U.S., parents have come up with the idea of naming their son Paul. This means that several boys named Paul have witnessed significant events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Paul has reached its best rank of #12 multiple times, most recently in 1931. The name has also been in the top 100 for many years. This makes Paul one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Paul was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Paul is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 1,362,117 people would currently turn around if you called out PAUL really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Paul on position 16 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many people named Paul, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that Paul is especially popular in Massachusetts? Here, 1,92% of all male residents bear the name Paul – that is a total of 78,542 men with this popular name and no other state has as many men named Paul relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: In Massachusetts Paul even belongs to the top 10 of all male names – the 78,542 men called Paulelevate their name up to place #10 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names for Massachusetts.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter P is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with P, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. But P is by no means the rarest initial. While X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D.
With four letters, the name Paul is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
From this follows that if 1.5% of all boys' names begin with a P, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Incidentally, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a P, Paul is currently the most common.
If your name is Paul and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Paul, you can simply say:
Pig
Apple
Unicorn
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Paul
Paul
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
P
A
U
L
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
P
A
U
L
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Paul sounds like this:
