Paul
A masculine name of Latin origin meaning "small" or "humble".
Name Census estimates that about 870,452 living Americans carry the first name Paul. It sits at #264 in the overall ranking, outside the top 50 but still well-represented. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Paul today is around 59 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Paul births was 1957 (27,075 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Paul. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Paul with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Paul is used almost entirely for boys, the SSA data does show 5,843 girls registered with the name since 1880.
- • Compared to the 1950s, recent registration numbers for Paul have dropped to less than 5% of what they once were.
People living today
870K
~ 1 in 394 Americans
Peak year
1957
27,075 babies that year
Average age
59
years old
2024 SSA rank
#264
Tracked since 1880
Census
Paul in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 907,227 people with the first name Paul, which placed it at #31 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#31
National first-name rank
People counted
907K
907,227 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
300.4
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
82.3% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Paul
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Paul is White at 82.3%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (6.5%) and Black (5.5%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Paul described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Paul at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White82.3% · 746,870
- Hispanic or Latino6.5% · 59,210
- Black or African American5.5% · 49,779
- Asian and Pacific Islander3.0% · 27,033
- Two or more races2.2% · 19,797
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.5% · 4,538
Gender
Gender distribution for Paul
Out of the 1,402,786 babies given the name Paul since 1880, 99.6% were registered as male. The name sits firmly on the male side of the spectrum, with only a handful of female registrations across the entire dataset.
Paul as a male name
- Ranked #264 in 2024
- 1,320 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1957 (27,012 births)
Paul as a female name
- Ranked #16,623 in 2006
- 6 female births in 2006
- Peak: 1928 (123 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Paul appears almost entirely male. Of the 907,225 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female.
Popularity
Paul: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Paul from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1950s, with 253,807 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1950s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Paul by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Paul during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
| Decade | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 4,196 | 17 | 4,213 |
| 1890s | 8,181 | 57 | 8,238 |
| 1900s | 12,636 | 93 | 12,729 |
| 1910s | 78,216 | 410 | 78,626 |
| 1920s | 132,384 | 853 | 133,237 |
| 1930s | 125,771 | 631 | 126,402 |
| 1940s | 183,356 | 538 | 183,894 |
| 1950s | 253,191 | 616 | 253,807 |
| 1960s | 242,503 | 916 | 243,419 |
| 1970s | 136,404 | 815 | 137,219 |
| 1980s | 104,397 | 708 | 105,105 |
| 1990s | 58,932 | 146 | 59,078 |
| 2000s | 30,959 | 43 | 31,002 |
| 2010s | 19,023 | 0 | 19,023 |
| 2020s | 6,794 | 0 | 6,794 |
Geography
Where Pauls live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, Pennsylvania, California recorded the most babies named Paul, while Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 26,932 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Paul
The name Paul has its origins in the ancient Roman world, deriving from the Latin name Paulus, which itself comes from the adjective "paullus" meaning "small" or "humble". This name was quite common among Roman citizens during the classical era.
Paul is also the name used for the famous apostle and early Christian missionary, originally known as Saul of Tarsus. Born around 5 AD in present-day Turkey, he played a pivotal role in the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His conversion from Judaism to Christianity and subsequent missionary work are recorded in the New Testament.
In the 3rd century AD, the name Paul gained further prominence with the reign of the Roman emperor Paul of Samosata, who ruled the eastern provinces from 260 to 272 AD. He was known for his theological views that were later deemed heretical by the Church.
During the Middle Ages, the name Paul remained popular among Christians, particularly in Western Europe. Notable examples include the 6th-century Pope Paul I, who reigned from 757 to 767 AD, and the Frankish scholar Paul the Deacon, who lived in the 8th century.
In the Renaissance period, the name Paul was associated with several influential figures, including the Italian humanist Paul the Venetian (c. 1369 - 1429) and the German reformer Paul Speratus (c. 1484 - 1551), who played a role in the Protestant Reformation.
Other notable historical figures with the name Paul include the French philosopher Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach (1723 - 1789), the Russian composer Paul Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893), and the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest (1880 - 1933).
Throughout history, the name Paul has been borne by numerous other significant individuals across various fields, including literature, art, politics, and science, reflecting its enduring popularity and cultural significance.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Paul
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Paul Abascal
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Paul Abbott
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Paul Anderson
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Paul Auster
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Paul Bartel
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Paul Brickman
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Paul Broun
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Paul Burchill
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Paul Feig
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Paul Flaherty
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Paul Glaser
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Paul Gross
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Paul Hodes
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Paul Hogan
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Paul Holmgren
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Paul Hunter
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Paul Hurst
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Paul Kariya
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Paul Krause
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Paul Landres
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Paul Leder
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Paul Loduca
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Paul Lynde
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Paul Marcus
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Paul Mazursky
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Paul Mccartney
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Paul Mcgann
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Paul Mcguigan
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Paul Miller
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Paul Molitor
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Paul Morrison
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Paul Morrissey
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Paul Muni
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Paul Newman
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Paul Oneill
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Paul Panzer
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Paul Pierce
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Paul Reiser
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Paul Reubens
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Paul Robeson
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Paul Rudd
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Paul Ryan
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Paul Satterfield
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Paul Schrader
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Paul Scofield
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Paul Simon
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Paul Verhoeven
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Paul Walker
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Paul Warfield
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Paul Weiland
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Paul Weitz
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Paul Weller
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Paul Wilson
People
Paul + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Paul as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with P
Other first names starting with P with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Paul: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Paul?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 870,452 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Paul going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 394 US residents.
Is Paul a common name?
We classify Paul as "Very Common". It ranks above 100% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 1,402,786 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Paul most popular?
The single biggest year for Paul was 1957, when 27,075 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Paul is about 59 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Paul in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 907,227 people with the name Paul, or 300.38 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #31 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Paul in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Paul?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Paul appears almost entirely male. Of the 907,225 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Paul?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Paul is White at 82.3%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (6.5%) and Black (5.5%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Paul most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Paul in the 2020 Census, accounting for 82.3% (746,870 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Paul in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Paul a male name?
Yes, 99.6% of people registered as Paul in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Paul still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Paul in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Paul can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many Americans are named Paul?
For a quick modern estimate, our sister site HowManyOfMe.org answers that in one glance, with the living-bearer count front and centre.