Paulus

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Paulus is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Czechia it is the 6th most common given name. In Dutch, recorded as Paul.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 381(measured from records)
  • CZCzechia1 in 27as Pavel
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 110as 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 Paulus 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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈6,000,000 named Paul, est.

#29 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
691 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 381 (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

PaulLatin(measured from records)
ПавелCyrillic(measured from records)
바울Hangul(measured from records)
ՊավելArmenian(measured from records)
პავლეGeorgian(measured from records)
โพเวลThai(measured from records)
ΠαβελGreek(measured from records)
פאלHebrew(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Paul in US United States, GB United Kingdom, NZ New Zealand and 2 more, Павел in RU Russia, CN China, Paulo in BR Brazil and Pavel in CZ Czechia.

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)

Latinized patronymic with nominative -us; from lat. paulus ‘small, slight’. Bearer counts: Paul 14652, Paulus 4450.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

How Paulus is read(measured from records)

Paulus is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • English49%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Paulus in English.

  • Dutch23%

    Paul

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German17%

    Latinized patronymic with nominative -us; from lat. paulus ‘small, slight’. Bearer counts: Paul 14652, Paulus 4450.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    from Latin Paulus, 'the small'; name of the Apostle Paul

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    Latinized surname form; borne by 4450. Morphological transposition / learned Latinization from Paul.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    Patronymic from the Latin personal name Paulus; shows nominative -us transposition.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

  • French9.8%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Paulus in French.

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)

Paulus 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.

Where Paulus is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈6,000,000 est.≈1 in 231—Павел111
BR Brazil—1,331,639as Paulo1 in 1591.4MPaulo282
RU Russia#34≈1,100,000 est.≈1 in 132#16Павел283
US United States#22907,225as Paul1 in 367906KPaul691
GB United Kingdom#8≈600,000 est.≈1 in 11070KPaul482
CZ Czechia#6401,994as Pavel1 in 27402KPavel222
NL Netherlands#2345,3411 in 38145KPaul206
IE Ireland#8≈37,000 est.≈1 in 139—Paul231
NZ New Zealand#10≈34,000 est.≈1 in 147—Paul226

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); MVČR — living population register 2017; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Paulus is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname53 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, Belgium, Paraguay

    Languages: French, Spanish, Catalan

    Also written Pau, Päü, Paul, Päu, Paú

  • Portuguese surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Argentina, Dominican Republic

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Paulús, Flavio Paulo, Paúlus

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Paulûs

  • Czech surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, United States

    Languages: Czech, Polish, Slovak

    Also written Pauluś, Pauluš

  • a separate surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Páulus

54 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Paulus 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.

  • In Vietnamese, Vietnamese Catholic form of Paul; older Latin-written saint name used before Vietnamization.

    as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam

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)

1700180019002000Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, b. 1761Eduard Paulus, b. 1837Käthe Paulus, b. 1868Friedrich Paulus, b. 1890Norma Paulus, b. 1933Bambou, b. 1959Diane Paulus, b. 1966Andreas Paulus, b. 1968Jochen Paulus, b. 1969Barbara Paulus, b. 1970

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 74 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Paulus
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—45K#51
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—25K#114
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.2K#6,551
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005K#6,317
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.7K#6,884
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.1K#4,635
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007820#2,166
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—492#2,025
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—478#3,193
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020305#28,616
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202254—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—54#63,204

Reference works 7

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 Paulus come from?
Latinized patronymic with nominative -us; from lat. paulus ‘small, slight’. Bearer counts: Paul 14652, Paulus 4450. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen.
What does the name Paulus mean?
In Dutch, Paul
What are other forms of the name Paulus?
In the etymology graph, Pal, Pasha and Pauli are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Paulus have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.0 million people named Paul in China, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Paulus most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Paulus is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 381 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Paulus?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 45,341 people named Paulus, about 1 in 381 residents.
How common is Paulus compared with other names?
In Czechia, Paulus is the 6th most common given name of 16,679 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Paulus?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/paulus

The 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, “Paulus” — the 6th most common given name in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Paulus parses inside a full name →