Paul

Paul comes from the Latin Paulus, a Roman family name that meant "small." It worked as an ordinary adjective long before it marked out a single person. The English sense keeps close to that root: small, and from there modest.

Reach and meaning pulled in opposite directions. Paul the Apostle wrote letters that spread across the early Christian world, and the humble Latin sense went with the name he signed. In the Roman calendar his feast falls on the twenty-ninth of June, shared with Peter, which fixes the name day many bearers still keep.

The meaning stays low to the ground. To be named Paul is to wear a word that once just meant small, worn now by people who fill a whole page of any class register.