Paolo
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Paolo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Italy it is the 17th most common given name. In Italian, recorded as Paul (biblical character).
- ITItaly≈1 in 202(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 2.1K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 6.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Paolo itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 343 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 202 (inferred from the name graph)
1,331,639 named Paulo, 2022
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Italian form of Paul; Lat. paulus 'small'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Paolo is read(measured from records)
Paolo is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Italian44%
Paul (biblical character)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Latino paulus, 'piccolo'; nome assunto da San Paolo dopo la conversione per umiltà.
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
- Spanish23%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Paolo in Spanish.
- English13%
A male given name from Italian, equivalent to English Paul.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French6.3%
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Paolo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 1,331,639as Paulo | 1 in 159 | 1.4M | Paolo | 126 |
| IT Italy | #17 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 202 | 555 | Paolo | 284 |
| PH Philippines | #600 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Paolo | 111 |
| US United States | — | 11,111as Paulo | 1 in 30K | 11K | Paolo | 343 |
| FR France | — | ≈7,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | 8.4K | Paolo | 6 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 5,616as Paulo | 1 in 3K | 5.6K | — | 40 |
| CH Switzerland | #304 | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 242 | Paolo | 119 |
| ES Spain | #908 | 1,985 | 1 in 25K | 2K | Paolo | 117 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 1,104as Paulo | 1 in 4.6K | 1.1K | — | 28 |
1,331,639 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022, counting the spelling paulo. 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); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INEC — civil registry names; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Paolo is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
From Latin. See }Paul in main dictionary. Feminine form: Paola.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Paolo Uccellob. 1397ITItalian painter (1397-1475)
- Camillo Benso di Cavourb. 1810ITnot in their usual namefirst Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy from March to June in 1861
- Paolo Stoppab. 1906ITItalian actor (1906–1988)
- Paolo Gentilonib. 1954ITItalian politician (born 1954)
- Paolo Rossib. 1956ITItalian footballer (1956–2020)
- Paolo Costellab. 1964ITItalian film director and screenwriter
- Paolo Genoveseb. 1966ITItalian film director
- Paolo Maldinib. 1968ITItalian association football player (born 1968)
- Paolo Sorrentinob. 1970ITItalian film director and screenwriter (born 1970)
- Paolo Guerrerob. 1984PEPeruvian association football player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 107 sources across 51 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 8.4K | #278 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6.3K | #3,355 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 2.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.3K | #4,564 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 2.2K | #5,612 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2K | #1,740 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.8K | #824 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 1.4K | #598 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 555 | #67 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 155 | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 150 | #1,682 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 76 | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- Where does the name Paolo come from?
- Italian form of Paul; Lat. paulus 'small'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- What does the name Paolo mean?
- In Italian, Paul (biblical character)
- Is Paolo a male or female name?
- Paolo is a male 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.
- In which country does Paolo have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.3 million people named Paulo, more than in any other country we hold.
- What are other forms of the name Paolo?
- In the etymology graph, Paul, Pablo and Pavel are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Paolo?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,985 people named Paolo, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Paolo compared with other names?
- In Italy, Paolo is the 17th most common given name of 102,667 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Paolo?
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/paoloThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Paolo” — the 17th most common given name in Italy. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.