Paule
given name · French · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Paule is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In the Congo - Kinshasa it is the 72nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: a female given name, masculine equivalent Paul.
- GPGuadeloupe1 in 608◐
- MQMartinique1 in 623
- FRFrance1 in 1.5K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈48K ●
- Sources
- 256 ●
- 1 in 1.5K ◐
across 9 countries
78K records
Official registry-verified
France
Meaning & origin●
a female given name, masculine equivalent Paul
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #388 | 46,245 | 70K rec. | 1 in 1.5K | 46K | Paule | 256 |
| BE Belgium | #659 | 2,906 | 3.3K rec. | — | 2 | Paule | 42 |
| MQ Martinique | #134 | 1,040 | 8 rec. | — | 5 | Paule | 7 |
| GP Guadeloupe | #128 | 1,020 | 3 rec. | — | 5 | Paule | 4 |
| CA Canada | — | 1,007 | 881 rec. | — | 6 | Paule | 81 |
| ES Spain | — | 974△ | 245 rec. | 1 in 51K | 974 | Paule | 30 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #72 | 770 | 768 rec. | — | listed | Paule | 7 |
| US United States | — | 431 | 1.5K rec. | 1 in 772K | 1.1K | Paule | 133 |
| CM Cameroon | #252 | 417 | 418 rec. | — | — | Paule | 26 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | 218 | 228 rec. | — | — | Paule | 21 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 80△ | 8 rec. | 1 in 216K | 80 | — | 6 |
| SE Sweden | — | 41△ | 1 rec. | 1 in 249K | 41 | — | 3 |
Roughly 46K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 1.5K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- French235K91%
- English9.1K4%
- Spanish4.4K2%
- French (Côte d’Ivoire)2.4K1%
- Catalan9741%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 235,206 | 91% |
| English | 9,136 | 4% |
| Spanish | 4,413 | 2% |
| French (Côte d’Ivoire) | 2,404 | 1% |
| Catalan | 974 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Paule 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 French, Féminin de Paul, du latin Paulus, « petit, humble ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Féminin de Paul; du latin, « petite ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, French female form of Paul; 'small'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In Latin, vocative singular of Paulus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1901 | 5 |
| 1902 | 5 |
| 1903 | 10 |
| 1904 | 10 |
| 1905 | 10 |
| 1906 | 5 |
| 1907 | 5 |
| 1908 | 15 |
| 1909 | 15 |
| 1910 | 10 |
| 1911 | 20 |
| 1912 | 15 |
| 1913 | 20 |
| 1914 | 15 |
| 1915 | 15 |
| 1916 | 15 |
| 1917 | 20 |
| 1918 | 15 |
| 1919 | 15 |
| 1920 | 15 |
| 1921 | 20 |
| 1922 | 15 |
| 1923 | 15 |
| 1924 | 15 |
| 1925 | 20 |
| 1926 | 20 |
| 1927 | 10 |
| 1928 | 10 |
| 1929 | 10 |
| 1930 | 10 |
| 1931 | 10 |
| 1932 | 15 |
| 1933 | 20 |
| 1934 | 20 |
| 1935 | 25 |
| 1936 | 15 |
| 1937 | 15 |
| 1938 | 20 |
| 1939 | 10 |
| 1940 | 10 |
| 1941 | 15 |
| 1942 | 15 |
| 1943 | 10 |
| 1944 | 15 |
| 1945 | 10 |
| 1946 | 15 |
| 1947 | 15 |
| 1948 | 15 |
| 1949 | 25 |
| 1950 | 15 |
| 1951 | 25 |
| 1952 | 25 |
| 1953 | 20 |
| 1954 | 15 |
| 1955 | 20 |
| 1956 | 20 |
| 1957 | 20 |
| 1958 | 15 |
| 1959 | 10 |
| 1960 | 15 |
| 1961 | 10 |
| 1962 | 10 |
| 1963 | 25 |
| 1964 | 5 |
| 1965 | 10 |
| 1966 | 20 |
| 1967 | 5 |
| 1968 | 10 |
| 1969 | 5 |
| 1970 | 5 |
| 1971 | 10 |
| 1972 | 5 |
| 1973 | 5 |
GP INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 971 (Guadeloupe) — 73 years between 1901–1973. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Paule Carrère-Dencausseb. 1891FRFrench pianist (1891-1969)
- Paulette Nardalb. 1896FRnot in their usual nameFrench journalist (1896-1985)
- Renée Faureb. 1918FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress (1918–2005)
- Paule Emanueleb. 1927FRFrench actress
- Paule Desjardinsb. 1929FRFrench singer (1929-2007)
- Geneviève Fontanelb. 1936FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
- Bernadette Lafontb. 1938FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress (1938-2013)
- Paule Constantb. 1944FRFrench writer and literary critic
- Paule Baillargeonb. 1945CACanadian actor and film director
- Françoise Combesb. 1952FRnot in their usual nameFrench astrophysicist and President of the French Academy of Sciences
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 55 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 46K | #3,172 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #24,511 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 974 | #2,889 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 936 | #24,929 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 835 | #28,552 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 831 | #1,587 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 466 | #9,685 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 431 | #20,524 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 335 | #11,035 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 335 | #11,025 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 234 | #32,317 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 80 | #6,363 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 320 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Paule?
- We estimate roughly 48 thousand people bear Paule (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Paule have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 46 thousand people bear Paule in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled paule.
- How common is Paule compared with other names?
- In France, Paule is the 388th most common given name of 711,207 given names recorded there.
- Is Paule a male or female name?
- Paule 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 Paule mean?
- Recorded meaning: a female given name, masculine equivalent Paul
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pauleThe 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
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, “Paule” — the 388th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.