Poul

given name · Latin script

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

Poul is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 34th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Old French Paul, brought to England by the Normans, itself from Latin Paulus.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 331(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 1M
  • GLGreenland≈1 in 8K

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.

Denmark (measured from records)

17,757 people

Sources
165 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 331 (inferred from the name graph)

Denmark

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Poul: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Poul
  1. Old FrenchPaul(measured from records)
  2. LatinPaulus(measured from records)

From Old French Paul, brought to England by the Normans, itself from Latin Paulus.

Sources 3

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Poul 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 Poul is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark#3417,7571 in 33118KPoul165
NG Nigeria—≈710 est.≈1 in 301K—Poul8
SE Sweden—4951 in 21K495Poul29
US United States—3251 in 1M324Poul132
KE Kenya—≈280 est.≈1 in 195K—Poul5
NO Norway—≈160 est.≈1 in 35K306Poul25
GL Greenland—≈7 est.≈1 in 8K181—11
FO Faroe Islands—≈2 est.≈1 in 21K67—15

17,757 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistics Greenland — First names (NAXT5); Hagstova Føroya — Given names, living population (PX-Web, 2024). 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)

Poul is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Kenya, Nigeria

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written পাউল, Paulu

  • Czech given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Slovakia

    Languages: Czech, Slovak

    Also written Pôűĺ

57 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)

Poul is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In enm, a male given name from Old French

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

  • In Haitian Creole, chicken

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

  • In Luxembourgish, stake

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

  • In Breton, collier de jonc

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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)

1700180019002000Paul Egede, b. 1708Poul Martin Møller, b. 1794Poul Nielsen, b. 1891Poul Henningsen, b. 1894Poul Hartling, b. 1914Poul Anderson, b. 1926Poul Schlüter, b. 1929Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, b. 1943Poul Ruders, b. 1949Poul Berg, 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 50 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Poul
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020121#141,309
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010100#160,975
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2#75,773
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Poul mean, and where does it come from?
From Old French Paul, brought to England by the Normans, itself from Latin Paulus. Recorded by Wiktionary and Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003) and 1 other source.
Is Poul a male or female name?
Poul 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 Poul?
In the etymology graph, Paul, Pablo and Paolo are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Poul have the most bearers?
In Denmark, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Poul, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled poul.
Where is Poul most common?
Poul is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 331 people carrying it.
How common is the name Poul?
In Denmark, the national register counted 17,757 people named Poul, about 1 in 331 residents.
How common is Poul compared with other names?
In Denmark, Poul is the 34th most common given name of 23,174 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Poul?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/poul

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Poul” — the 34th most common given name in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Poul parses inside a full name →