Pau
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative form of pa (“Maori fort”)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Pau is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- BEBelgium1 in 6.2Kas Paulus(measured from records)
- NANamibia≈1 in 12K
- GYGuyana1 in 363as Paul
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 Pau 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 208 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
78,256 named Paul, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Namibia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Paulus in US United States, BE Belgium, CH Switzerland.
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)
Alternative form of pa (“Maori fort”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pau 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 | — | 78,256as Paul | 1 in 4.3K | 906K | Paulus | 133 |
| IN India | — | 21,842as Paul | 1 in 61K | 22K | — | 13 |
| PL Poland | — | 2,290as Paul | 1 in 17K | 2.5K | — | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,116as Paulus | 1 in 100K | 2.1K | — | 1 |
| GY Guyana | — | 2,066as Paul | 1 in 363 | 2.1K | — | — |
| BE Belgium | #390 | 1,902as Paulus | 1 in 6.2K | 1.9K | Paulus | 59 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 797as Paul | 1 in 11K | 797 | Paulus | 23 |
| NA Namibia | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 38 | — | 3 |
78,256 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling paul. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); ECN Government Gazette 8791 — 2025 local authority candidates. 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)
Pau 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.
In Catalan, peace
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, oriundo da cidade sarda de Pau
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, city, France
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Italian, Cognome sardo, proprio del Campidano, formato dal toponimo Pau (OR).
as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani
In German, männl. Vom., katalanische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Pau Casalsb. 1876ESSpanish cellist, conductor and composer (1876–1973)
- Bao Tongb. 1932CNnot in their usual namePolicy secretary of former CCP general secretary & Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang (1932–2022)
- Peter Paub. 1952USHong Kong cinematographer
- Petra Paub. 1963DEGerman politician
- Zhenan Baob. 1970CNnot in their usual nameChinese American chemical engineer
- Pau Gasolb. 1980ESSpanish basketball player (born 1980)
- Pau Masób. 1986ESactor, model
- Pau Lópezb. 1994ESSpanish association football player
- Pau Torresb. 1997ESSpanish association football player
- Pau Cubarsíb. 2007ESSpanish footballer (born 2007)
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 70 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #7,894 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,896 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 852 | #28,100 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 755 | #11,820 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 567 | #37,043 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 183 | #7,894 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 45 | #28,053 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 29 | #4,970 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 26 | #4,933 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 23 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 21 | #113,027 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 20 | #36,564 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 does the name Pau mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of pa (“Maori fort”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Pau have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 78 thousand people named Paul, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Pau?
- In the United States, the national register counted 78,256 people named Paul in 2010, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Pau compared with other names?
- In Belgium, Pau is the 390th most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pau?
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/pauThe 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, “Pau” — the 390th most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.