Paulette
The girl's name Paulette has been in the national records since 1907, with 47,152 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,534th. About 36,000 Paulettes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 70.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Paulette boys named Paulette
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 47,152
- Estimated living today
- 36,000
- Median age today
- 70
- Peak year
- 1948
- Best rank
- 123rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,534th
- First recorded
- 1907
- Girls / boys
- 47,087 / 65
How old the living Paulettes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 47,152 babies given the name since 1907, about 36,000 are alive — 76 in every hundred. Roughly 1,900 of them are children and 23,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1955 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin French
Borrowed in the twentieth century from Paulette, a diminutive feminine form of Paul.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Paulettes
- Paulette Goddard (1910–1990)American actress
- Paulette Dubost (1910–2011)French actress
- Paulette Nardal (1896–1985)French journalist
- Paulette Cooper (born 1942)American journalist and writer
People named Paulette with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Paulette is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Paulette is most concentrated in North Dakota (3.4×), Hawaii (2.9×), the District of Columbia (2.6×), Rhode Island (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1948
The most popular girls’ names the year Paulette peaked:
Paulette elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Paulette | 213,280 | 6th |
| Belgium girls | Paulette | 42 | 653rd |
| Ireland girls | Paulette | 37 | 326th |
| England and Wales girls | Paulette | 6 | 3,912th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Paulette: rank by region
In 2025, Paulette was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Paulette | 416 | 12 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Paulette appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (204th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Paulette among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Paulette | 5 | 43 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Paulette against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.