Soul

org · Latin script

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

Soul is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Wilts and Gloucs; also. locative name from Soules near Saint-Lô (Manche).

rarermore common
  • USUnited States
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • AUAustralia

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
161 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Main GB Location (1881): Wilts and Gloucs; also. locative name from Soules near Saint-Lô (Manche). Further information: The Scottish family of this name apparently originates with Ranulf de Soulis (d. before 1170), a Norman knight who came to Scotland with King David I and served as his cupbearer. Sir John Soulis (d. before 1310) was appointed guardian of Scotland by King John Balliol in 1301.

Sources 5

  • A dictionary of surnames
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Soul counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Soul is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—288Soul161
AU Australia—1Soul63
GB United Kingdom—315Soul83
CA Canada—1Soul46
NL Netherlands—15Soul6

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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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)

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

  • French given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada

    Also written Soùl, Sôūl, Söül, Sõul, Sôul

  • Czech surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia

    Also written Šoul, Şŏùl, Šöul, Šoùĺ, Söül

50 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Joseph Soul, b. 1815Caleb Soul, b. 1817Maelcum Soul, b. 1940Jimmy Soul, b. 1942Bernard Soul, b. 1953China Soul, 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 39 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Soul
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002315#15,805
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020264#78,145
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010249#77,012
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000236#75,938
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Soul mean, and where does it come from?
Main GB Location (1881): Wilts and Gloucs; also. locative name from Soules near Saint-Lô (Manche). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
In which country does Soul have the most bearers?
Soul is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled soul.

What do you want to know about Soul?

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

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, “Soul”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Soul parses inside a full name →