Paolo

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Italian: Paul (biblical character)

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

/paolo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

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.

rarermore common
  • 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)

1,331,639 named Paulo, 2022

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
343 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 202 (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

PaoloLatin(measured from records)
ПаолоCyrillic(measured from records)
ፓኦሎEthiopic(measured from records)
ΠάολοGreek(measured from records)
პაოლოGeorgian(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%

    Italian form of Paul; Lat. paulus 'small'.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

    Forme italienne de Paul, du latin Paulus, « petit, humble ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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.

Where Paolo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—1,331,639as Paulo1 in 1591.4MPaolo126
IT Italy#17≈310,000 est.≈1 in 202555Paolo284
PH Philippines#600≈17,000 est.≈1 in 6.3K—Paolo111
US United States—11,111as Paulo1 in 30K11KPaolo343
FR France—≈7,000 est.≈1 in 9.7K8.4KPaolo6
EC Ecuador—5,616as Paulo1 in 3K5.6K—40
CH Switzerland#304≈4,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K242Paolo119
ES Spain#9081,9851 in 25K2KPaolo117
CR Costa Rica—1,104as Paulo1 in 4.6K1.1K—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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • English given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Italy, Australia

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Pao-Lo, Påolo, Paólo, 'Paolo, Pâólò

  • Hindi given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Paulo, পাওলো, Pawlo, Poulo

  • Finnish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, Philippines, Hungary, Switzerland

    Languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian

    Also written Pâõlõ, Paõlõ

  • Thai given name20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Thailand, Italy, Philippines

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written เปาโล, Pual, Paulós, Paulos, Páóló

65 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)

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)

12001400160018002000Paolo Uccello, b. 1397Camillo Benso di Cavour, b. 1810Paolo Stoppa, b. 1906Paolo Gentiloni, b. 1954Paolo Rossi, b. 1956Paolo Costella, b. 1964Paolo Genovese, b. 1966Paolo Maldini, b. 1968Paolo Sorrentino, b. 1970Paolo Guerrero, b. 1984

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 107 sources across 51 countries.

Official registers attesting Paolo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20248.4K#278
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20206.3K#3,355
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20222.4K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.3K#4,564
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—2.2K#5,612
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—2K#1,740
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—1.8K#824
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20241.4K#598
IT ItalyISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend)2024555#67
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020155—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—150#1,682
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202576—

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)
How do you pronounce Paolo?
A machine transcription gives /paolo/ (IPA) for Italian.
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?

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

The 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, “Paolo” — the 17th most common given name in Italy. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Paolo parses inside a full name →