What does the name Paul mean? Paul is the English form of the Latin Paulus, an adjective meaning “small” or “little”. The New Testament writes it in Greek as Παῦλος (Paulos).1 The man the church calls the apostle Paul was born with a second name, Saul, Shaʾul (שָׁאוּל) in Hebrew, which means “asked for”, or “asked of God”.2 One name is Roman and one is Hebrew, and the Bible uses both for the same man. This page sets out what each name means, where each appears, and what the Islamic sources call him.
What does Paulus mean? #
In Latin, paulus is an ordinary word for something small, and Paulus was a family name (a cognomen) borne by Roman nobles long before the first century, among them the house of the Aemilii Pauli. As a personal name it was a Roman name with no religious sense, worn by Roman citizens and by provincials who wanted a name Romans could use.
The name has no meaning in Hebrew. The Greek of the New Testament simply carries the Latin name across: Παῦλος is the same word, written in Greek letters.
The New Testament gives the name to two men. The first in order of appearance is Sergius Paulus, the Roman governor of Cyprus. The second is the subject of this site, and the verse that joins them is the first in which Acts gives Paul his Roman name.
9Σαῦλος δέ, ὁ καὶ Παῦλος, πλησθεὶς πνεύματος ἁγίου ἀτενίσας εἰς αὐτὸν
9Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him,3
From that verse on, Acts calls him Paul. The name Saul does not return in the narrative, except where Paul himself retells the vision near Damascus and quotes the voice that called him by his Hebrew name.4 Why Acts makes the change at that moment, beside a Roman governor who bore the same name, is a separate question. It is examined in The Roman: name and tongue, which follows the Roman in Paul through his name, his languages and his citizenship.
What does Saul mean? #
Saul is Shaʾul, “asked for”. The name belongs first to the king of Israel, Saul the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, whom the people asked for when they demanded a king. Two other men of the Old Testament carry it, an Edomite king and a son of Simeon (Shaul in the King James Version).5 The man of Tarsus says he too was of Benjamin, and it is a likely reason for his Hebrew name.
5περιτομῇ ὀκταήμερος, ἐκ γένους Ἰσραήλ, φυλῆς Βενιαμίν, Ἑβραῖος ἐξ Ἑβραίων, κατὰ νόμον Φαρισαῖος,
5Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;6
The New Testament writes the Hebrew name in two ways. The narrative of Acts uses Σαῦλος (Saulos), a Greek form with a Greek ending. The voice of the vision uses Σαούλ (Saoul), the Hebrew name left undeclined, as the Greek Bible writes the king’s name.
4καὶ πεσὼν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἤκουσεν φωνὴν λέγουσαν αὐτῷ Σαοὺλ Σαούλ, τί με διώκεις;
4And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?7
Acts says that the voice spoke “in the Hebrew tongue” (Acts 26:14), and the undeclined form agrees with that.
Did Saul change his name to Paul? #
Acts makes the change on Cyprus, well after the road to Damascus. Many readers take the change of name for a sign of the change of heart, yet after the vision Acts still calls him Saul: in Damascus, in Jerusalem, in Tarsus, in Antioch, and on the journey to Cyprus.8 He is Saul for four chapters after his conversion, and he becomes Paul only in Acts 13:9, in the words “Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,)”.
The phrase “who also is called” suggests that he had both names already. A Jew of a Greek city, with family ties to Rome, could well carry a Hebrew name at home and a Roman one abroad. The letters bear this out in their own way. Paul never calls himself Saul in any of them. Every letter he wrote opens with Παῦλος, from Romans to Philemon, and he signs with that name alone: “The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand.”9
Is Paul a Jewish name? #
No. Paul is a Latin name, and Saul is the Jewish one. Jews of the first century who lived among Greeks and Romans often carried a second name for use outside the community, chosen for its sound or its likeness to the Hebrew: Jesus who is called Justus, John whose surname was Mark, Simeon called Niger.10 Saul and Paulus are close in sound, and that may be why the pair was chosen. Acts does not explain it, and Paul never mentions it.
The least of the apostles #
A reader who knows the meaning of the name will notice how Paul speaks of himself. To the Corinthians he writes “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”11 The match is in the meanings, and nothing shows that Paul meant a play on his own name: Paulus, “small”, calls himself the smallest.
The humility has a limit. In the next verse he adds that he “laboured more abundantly than they all”, and elsewhere he says he was “not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles”.12 The small name and the large claim stand side by side in his own letters, and Was Paul an apostle? A self-appointed one follows the claim.
Paul in other languages #
The Latin name passed into every language of the churches. It is Paul in English and French, Paulus in German, Dutch and Malay, Pablo in Spanish, Paolo in Italian, Paulo in Portuguese, Pavel in Russian and Czech, and Paweł in Polish. Greek keeps Pavlos. The Malay form, Paulus, is the first word of the title of the book behind this site, Paulus Perosak Risalah Al-Masih.
In Arabic he is Būlus (بولس), the form used by Christian Arabic Bibles and by the Muslim scholars who wrote about him. Some texts, Ibn Kathīr’s among them, spell it Būluṣ (بولص). His Hebrew name appears in Arabic as Shāwul (شاول). Ibn ʿAsākir, in his history of Damascus, describes Būlus as one of the leaders of the Jews and the fiercest of them against what al-Masīḥ brought.13 The Arabic spellings and their sources are listed in the Glossary.
The name Būlus in the hadith #
One hadith gives the Arabic form of the name to a place. Al-Albānī graded it ḥasan, and al-Tirmidhī recorded it with the words «هَذَا حَدِيثٌ حَسَنٌ». The Messenger of God ﷺ said:
يُحْشَرُ المُتَكَبِّرُونَ يَوْمَ القِيَامَةِ أَمْثَالَ الذَّرِّ فِي صُوَرِ الرِّجَالِ يَغْشَاهُمُ الذُّلُّ مِنْ كُلِّ مَكَانٍ، فَيُسَاقُونَ إِلَى سِجْنٍ فِي جَهَنَّمَ يُسَمَّى بُولَسَ
“The arrogant will be gathered on the Day of Resurrection like specks of dust in the form of men. Humiliation will cover them from every side, and they will be driven to a prison in Hell called Būlus.”14
The hadith speaks of the arrogant and names no man. The spelling is the Arabic spelling of Paul’s name, and the sin it punishes is pride. The early Islamic record weighs what the echo can and cannot bear, and the account of this site’s name explains why the book takes it up.
The name in short #
- Paul is a Roman name: Latin Paulus, Greek Παῦλος, “small, little”.
- Saul is the Hebrew Shaʾul, “asked for”, the name of Israel’s first king, of the tribe of Benjamin.
- The name changes in Acts 13:9, on Cyprus, and the letters use Paul alone.
- In Arabic he is Būlus (بولس), and his Hebrew name is Shāwul (شاول).
The two names belong to one life. Saul is the persecutor, whose record is set out in Saul the persecutor, and Paul is the apostle he named himself. Who the man was, behind both names, is the subject of Who was Paul of Tarsus in the Bible?.
- Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. paulus, “little, small”; Joseph H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. Παῦλος, “a Latin proper name, Paulus“. ↩
- Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. שָׁאוּל, “asked (of Yah)”; it is the passive participle of the verb shaʾal, “to ask”. ↩
- Acts 13:9 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- Acts 22:7, 13; 26:14. See The three accounts compared. ↩
- Genesis 36:37; Genesis 46:10. On the king and the two Sauls compared, see Saul in the Bible: King Saul and Saul of Tarsus. ↩
- Philippians 3:5 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- Acts 9:4 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- Acts 9:8–30; 11:25–30; 12:25; 13:1–7. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 16:21 (KJV); compare Galatians 1:1; Philemon 1:1, 9, 19. ↩
- Colossians 4:11 (a letter written in Paul’s name); Acts 12:12; 13:1. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:9 (KJV). The Greek is ἐλάχιστος, the superlative of “small”. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:10; 2 Corinthians 11:5 (KJV). ↩
- Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, vol. 5 (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995), p. 333: «كان بولس من رؤساء اليهود وأشدهم بأسًا وأعظمهم شأنًا في إنكار ما جاء به المسيح…». The classical Muslim writers on Paul are set out in The early Islamic record. ↩
- Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, no. 2492, ed. Aḥmad Shākir, vol. 4, p. 655, from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather (shamela.ws/book/1435/4295). Al-Albānī grades it ḥasan. The hadith continues with the fire that rises over them and the drink of the people of Hell. ↩