Boulle

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Boulle is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Alternative form of buhl.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 37K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MUMauritius≈1 in 30K
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 130K

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.

France (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,900 people, est.

Sources
188 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 30K (inferred from the name graph)

Mauritius, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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 buhl.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Boulle 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 Boulle is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France—≈1,900 est.≈1 in 37K259Boulle188
ZA South Africa—≈430 est.≈1 in 130K—Boulle16
US United States—≈89 est.≈1 in 3.7MlistedBoulle50
MU Mauritius#762≈46 est.≈1 in 30K—Boulle5
BE Belgium—401 in 293K40Boulle15
CA Canada—≈22 est.≈1 in 1.7M—Boulle12
SC Seychelles#134———Boulle6

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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)

Boulle is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Boullé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Boullé

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt

    Also written Boullé

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, United States

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Boullè

39 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)

Boulle 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 Croatian, francuski majstor baroknog pokućstva (pokućstvo u Versaillesu, Fontainebleauu, Louvreu); po njemu prozvan stil poznat po intarzijama

    as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export

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)

150016001700180019002000Hélène Boullé, b. 1598André-Charles Boulle, b. 1642Jean-Pierre Boullé, b. 1753Philippe Boullé, b. 1790Vincent-Marie Boullé, b. 1803Pierre Boulle, b. 1912Jean-Raymond Boulle, b. 1950Rémy Boullé, b. 1988

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 6 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Boulle
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1951388—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1961357—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1941320—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1931320—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1971302—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1921282—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1981280—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1901270—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991259—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1911243—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1891170—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200840#30,472

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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 Boulle mean, and where does it come from?
Alternative form of buhl. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Boulle have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 thousand people named Boulle in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boulle.
How common is the name Boulle?
In Belgium, the national register counted 40 people named Boulle in 2008, about 1 in 293 thousand residents.
How common is Boulle compared with other names?
In the Seychelles, Boulle is the 134th most common surname of 2,002 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Boulle?

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

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, “Boulle” — the 134th most common surname in Seychelles. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Boulle parses inside a full name →