Paula
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɔːlə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Paula is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Angola it is the 26th most common given name.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 150(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 279
- CLChile≈1 in 378
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)
- #412 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 466 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 150 (inferred from the name graph)
256,421 people, 2020
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs. Paulette ° French diminutive feminine form of Paul. It is widely used in the Englishspeaking world, where, however, it is a more recent importation than Pauline.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Paula, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Paula 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #906 | 256,421 | 1 in 1.3K | 256K | Paula | 466 |
| BR Brazil | #31 | 212,186 | 1 in 998 | 223K | Paula | 250 |
| ES Spain | #74 | 179,475 | 1 in 279 | 179K | Paula | 241 |
| CO Colombia | #48 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 410 | — | Paula | 211 |
| AR Argentina | #143 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 481 | 562 | Paula | 195 |
| PT Portugal | #27 | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 150 | listed | Paula | 187 |
| CL Chile | #129 | ≈48,000 est. | ≈1 in 378 | 1 | Paula | 164 |
| AO Angola | #26 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 706 | — | Paula | 41 |
| FI Finland | #497 | 18,402 | 1 in 303 | 24K | Paula | 46 |
| NI Nicaragua | #32 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 385 | — | Paula | 25 |
256,421 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); the pt-irn-lista-nomes register; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Paula is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A feminine of Pau/, sometimes used in Ireland. Pauline [Poilin] (f) A feminine form of Paul from its derivative, Paulinus.
as a nameIrish first names
In Swedish, Paula är en femininform till → Paul och Paulus. I både den rikssvenska och finlands svenska almanackan 22 juni.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Spanish, femenino de Paulus; variante femenina de Pablo.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
In Italian, forma feminina de Paulo
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In French, Female form of Paul; 'small'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- Paula Modersohn-Beckerb. 1876DEGerman expressionist painter (1876–1907)
- Paula von Preradovićb. 1887ATAustrian writer, poet (1887-1951)
- Paula Hitlerb. 1896ATyounger sister of Adolf Hitler (1896–1960)
- Eva Braunb. 1912DEnot in their usual namephotographer, longtime companion and later wife of Adolf Hitler (1912–1945)
- Paula Regob. 1935PTPortuguese-British visual artist (1935-2022)
- Paula Abdulb. 1962USAmerican singer, dancer, choreographer, actress, and television personality
- Paula Hawkinsb. 1972GBBritish writer
- Paula Pattonb. 1975USAmerican actress (born 1975)
- Paula Selingb. 1978RORomanian singer, celebrity
- Paula Fernandesb. 1984BRBrazilian singer-songwriter
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 131 sources across 66 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 256K | #210 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 223K | #235 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 212K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 210K | #152 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 179K | #45 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 175K | #21 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 24K | #101 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 18K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 2.6K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2K | #152 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 562 | #258 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 477 | #210 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- What are other forms of the name Paula?
- In the etymology graph, Paola, Pauline and Paulette are forms of the same name in other languages; Pavica is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Paula a male or female name?
- Paula is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- Where does the name Paula come from?
- Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs. Paulette ° French diminutive feminine form of Paul. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What does the name Paula mean?
- Recorded meaning: Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs.
- In which country does Paula have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 256 thousand people named Paula, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled paula.
- How do you pronounce Paula?
- A machine transcription gives /pɔːlə/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Paula?
- In the United States, the national register counted 256,421 people named Paula in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Paula compared with other names?
- In the United States, Paula is the 906th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Paula?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/paulaThe 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, “Paula” — the 906th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.