Saul
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the male personal name Saul, from Hebrew Shaul, literally ‘asked-for (child)’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sol/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Saul is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Honduras it is the 62nd most common given name.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 529(inferred from the name graph)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 1.1K
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.4K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 419 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 529 (inferred from the name graph)
51,866 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, 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)
From the male personal name Saul, from Hebrew Shaul, literally ‘asked-for (child)’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Saul 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 | #829 | 51,866 | 1 in 6.4K | 52K | Saul | 419 |
| PE Peru | #238 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Saul | 89 |
| ES Spain | #392 | 18,793 | 1 in 2.7K | 19K | Saul | 149 |
| CO Colombia | #394 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 14 | Saul | 111 |
| VE Venezuela | #274 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Saul | 60 |
| SV El Salvador | #129 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 529 | — | Saul | 56 |
| HN Honduras | #62 | ≈8,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Saul | 41 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 8,420 | 1 in 2K | 8.4K | Saul | 51 |
51,866 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry 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)
Saul 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 biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'asked for' or 'prayed for'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Saul represents the transition from the period of the Judges to the Monarchy in Israel. Theologically, his narrative serves as a cautionary tale about the necessity of total obedience to God and the consequences of jealousy and spiritual deterioration.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, from Hebrew Saul 'asked for'; first attested Ricardus filius Sawl 1198 AC
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In German, from Hebrew Saul 'the requested one'; also place-name origin
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, from Hebrew šāʾūl 'asked for, requested'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Paul the Apostleb. 5TRnot in their usual nameEarly Christian apostle and missionary (c. AD 5 – c. 64/65)
- Saul Chaplinb. 1912USAmerican composer and musical director (1912-1997)
- Saul Bellowb. 1915USCanadian-American writer (1915–2005)
- Saul Bassb. 1920USAmerican graphic designer and filmmaker (1920–1996)
- Saul Zaentzb. 1921USAmerican film producer and record company executive (1921-2014)
- Carlos Saúl Menemb. 1930ARArgentinean president between 1989 and 1999
- Saul Kripkeb. 1940USAmerican philosopher and logician (1940–2022)
- Saul Perlmutterb. 1959USAmerican astrophysicist and Nobel laureate
- Saul Hudsonb. 1965USBritish musician
- Saúl Ñíguezb. 1994ESSpanish 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).
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 105 sources across 52 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 52K | #871 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 19K | #359 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 17K | #169 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 8.4K | #217 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 535 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 121 | #871 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 83 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 14 | #107 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2004 | 6 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Saul mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name Saul, from Hebrew Shaul, literally ‘asked-for (child)’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Saul?
- In the United States, the national register counted 51,866 people named Saul in 2020, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Saul compared with other names?
- In the United States, Saul is the 829th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Saul?
- A machine transcription gives /sol/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Saul a male or female name?
- Saul 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.
- What are other forms of the name Saul?
- In the etymology graph, Paul, Saulius and Sauli are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Saul have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 52 thousand people named Saul, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled saul.
What do you want to know about Saul?
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/saulThe 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, “Saul” — the 829th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.