Paula

given name · Portuguese · Latin script

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

Paula is a given name, most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is the 51st most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs.

rarermore common
  • COColombia1 in 90◐
  • PTPortugal1 in 167
  • CLChile1 in 216

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈742K ●

across 13 countries

#182 ●

of 16M given names

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
427 ●

4.3M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 279 ◐

Spain

Spellings & scripts●

PaulaLatin · Portuguese●4.2M records
ΠάολαGreek · Greek●8 records
파올라Hangul · Korean●0 records
Päo҉låCyrillic · Spanish●0 records

Locally spelled Paola in AR Argentina, CO Colombia, MX Mexico and 9 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs. Paulette ° French diminutive feminine form of Paul. It is widely used in the Englishspeaking world, where, however, it is a more recent importation than Pauline.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Paula is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#512,817,7011.6M rec.—562Paola185
CO Colombia#8694,094158K rec.—109Paola203
MX Mexico#93647,345466K rec.—734Paola240
CL Chile#30417,40936K rec.—23Paola156
PE Peru#68403,395312K rec.——Paola111
VE Venezuela#95256,259149K rec.——Paola100
US United States#719255,944388K rec.1 in 1.3K256KPaula427
BR Brazil#99212,186409K rec.1 in 998223KPaula242
ES Spain#44179,475177K rec.1 in 279179KPaula222
IT Italy#70103,154106K rec.—143Paola213
PY Paraguay#3659,94338K rec.——Paola56
PT Portugal#2750,40024K rec.—listedPaula177

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Portuguese4.2M35%
  • English3.3M27%
  • Spanish3.2M26%
  • Catalan180K1%
  • 151K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese4,221,17035%
English3,292,48227%
Spanish3,178,84026%
Catalan179,5251%
151,1591%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

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

  • English given name3.9M records spelled Paula51 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Pauela, Paulae, Paul-A, Pàulà, 'Paula

  • a separate given name188K records spelled Paula4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain

    Also written Paŭla, Paúla, PaulÂ

  • Czech given name160K records spelled Paula88 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Poland, Croatia, United States

    Languages: Czech, Polish, Croatian

    Also written Pavla, Paola, Павла, Паола

  • French given name116K records spelled Paula4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, United Kingdom

    Also written Paul-A, Paüla, Paùla

100 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●

Paula 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 feminine of Pau/, sometimes used in Ireland. Pauline [Poilin] (f) A feminine form of Paul from its derivative, Paulinus.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In Swedish, Paula är en femininform till → Paul och Paulus. I både den rikssvenska och finlands svenska almanackan 22 juni.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Spanish, femenino de Paulus; variante femenina de Pablo.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • In Italian, forma feminina de Paulo

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In French, Female form of Paul; 'small'.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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.

Over time●

05K10K15K19001950200010K · 1963

Show as table
Paula in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
18809
18819
18826
188319
188412
188516
188621
188726
188827
188933
189035
189144
189240
189347
189434
189537
189647
189745
189855
189940
190047
190150
190241
190357
190479
190568
190689
190776
190883
190976
191089
1911105
1912164
1913150
1914184
1915228
1916289
1917303
1918265
1919245
1920343
1921326
1922305
1923378
1924418
1925464
1926541
1927602
1928558
1929619
1930614
1931585
1932658
1933611
1934759
1935774
1936982
19371,212
19381,318
19391,348
19401,372
19411,540
19421,974
19433,042
19443,315
19453,798
19464,724
19476,102
19486,600
19496,577
19506,631
19517,290
19528,567
19539,557
19549,686
19559,585
19568,925
19578,544
19588,025
19598,059
19608,066
19617,744
19627,193
196310,156
19649,498
19657,915
19667,856
19677,694
19687,637
19696,753
19706,055
19715,379
19724,260
19733,504
19743,061
19752,651
19762,250
19772,043
19781,827
19791,694
19801,598
19811,480
19821,328
19831,159
19841,102
19851,015
1986881
1987903
1988812
1989794
1990940
1991849
1992776
1993630
1994623
1995553
1996552
1997504
1998457
1999446
2000454
2001420
2002416
2003356
2004419
2005416
2006431
2007455
2008448
2009362
2010332
2011325
2012385
2013307
2014267
2015310
2016348
2017319
2018344
2019373
2020331
2021338
2022349
2023402
2024375
2025318

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Paula Modersohn-Becker, b. 1876Paula von Preradović, b. 1887Paula Hitler, b. 1896Eva Braun, b. 1912Paula Rego, b. 1935Paula Abdul, b. 1962Paula Hawkins, b. 1972Paula Patton, b. 1975Paula Seling, b. 1978Paula Fernandes, 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).

Evidence●

Attested in 124 sources across 66 countries.

Official registers attesting Paula
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020256K#210
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—223K#235
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022212K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—210K#152
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—179K#45
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—175K#21
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202429K#64
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—24K#201
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—18K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—16K#162
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)202616K#162
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—7.2K#517

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-09-12 data build · 1,785 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Paula?
We estimate roughly 742 thousand people bear Paula (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Paula have the most bearers?
Paula is most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is most often spelled paola.
How common is Paula compared with other names?
In Argentina, Paula is the 51st most common given name of 517,176 given names recorded there.
Is Paula a male or female name?
Paula is a female 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 does the name Paula mean?
Recorded meaning: Latin feminine form of Paul, borne by various minor early saints and martyrs.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/paula

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. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Paula” — the 51st most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Paula parses inside a full name →