Paulina
Around 224,000 Polish women carry it, but it's barely given now: just 223 newborn girls last year. A Latin name at root, meaning "small, humble".
Paulina Pronunciation
Paulina is pronounced pah-oo-LEE-nah (/pauˈlina/).
What Paulina means
Where Paulina comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Paulina grows straight from Latin. It descends from Paulus, a Roman family name built on paulus, the plain word for small or humble. Paulina is the feminine of Paulin, and the same root gave Polish its Paweł, so a girl and a boy two desks apart in a class register can share one Roman word without knowing it.
The meaning has stayed modest. Small and humble were not slights in Rome; they described size or rank plainly, and the name wore that plainness comfortably. Paulina reached Poland early. Scribes wrote it as Pawlina around the year 1300, close to Paweł and closer still to the eastern variant Pavlina that Slavic ears recognize at once.
So the story stays short. A small name and a humble one, carried by the feminine Paulina, the cross-gender Paweł, and the variant Pavlina, all resting on the Latin paulus.
When Paulina celebrates name day
Paulina appears 7 times in the Polish name day calendar, 5 of them as a main name, the first on 26 May.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Paulina
1 in 101 women in Poland is named Paulina. 224,177 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #59 among female names.
Paulina's popularity over time
223 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #174 among newborns. It has been falling steadily since 2000. Still the #59 name among living women, even as it slips to #174 among newborns.
Where Paulina is most popular
Paulina is most popular in Opole, 241% above the national average (232 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Silesian (+149%) and Pomeranian (+26%). It is least common in Świętokrzyskie and Greater Poland, 46% and 44% below average respectively.
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Opole232 girls born+241%
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Silesian836 girls born+149%
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Pomeranian273 girls born+26%
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Lublin152 girls born0%
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Podlaskie96 girls born−1%
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Warmian-Masurian101 girls born−5%
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Lesser Poland285 girls born−15%
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Subcarpathian141 girls born−21%
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Lubusz51 girls born−30%
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West Pomeranian87 girls born−30%
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Lower Silesian157 girls born−32%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian110 girls born−32%
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Masovian331 girls born−37%
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Łódź110 girls born−41%
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Greater Poland179 girls born−44%
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Świętokrzyskie44 girls born−46%
Paulina as a middle name
Paulina is a first name for 224,177 women in Poland and a middle name for another 68,786, a 77/23 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 44th, between Sylwia (73,048) and Patrycja (62,344).
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#42 Kazimiera73,888
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#43 Sylwia73,048
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#44 Paulina68,786
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#45 Patrycja62,344
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#46 Kinga59,349