Raul
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Form Of Ralph Wolf Counsel.
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Raul
Raul is the Spanish form of Ralph/Raoul, descending from the Old Germanic Radulf, composed of rad (counsel) and wulf (wolf) — yielding "wolf-counsel" or "counsel-wolf." The Latinate Raúl (with accent) has been used continuously across Spanish-speaking Catholic naming traditions for centuries.
Notable bearers include the iconic Cuban revolutionary leader Raúl Castro (Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz, born 1931, the brother of Fidel Castro and President of Cuba 2008–2018); American boxer Raúl "Rulo" Hernández; Spanish soccer star Raúl González (born 1977, the iconic Spanish striker who played 16 seasons for Real Madrid); and the contemporary fictional Raul of various Spanish-language telenovelas.
Raul has been continuously used in Spanish-speaking American communities for over a century. The name held a US top-300 boys' rank from 1970 through 2010, driven primarily by Spanish-language naming influence. The name's appeal is its layered Old Germanic-Latinate-Spanish-Catholic pedigree combined with one firm syllable — the in-built wolf-counsel etymological register, the strong contemporary Spanish-speaking cultural recognition, and tonal warmth distinctive to Spanish-language naming. The name reads as both classical-Spanish and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Rauly (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Rul each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Raul, Raúl (Spanish original, with accent), Raoul (French), and Ralph (English) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Ralph (English), Raoul (French), Raffaele (Italian alternate), Rolf (German), and the original Old Germanic Radulf.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Raul
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Raul by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 1,519 boys named Raul (boy rank #223 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #634 for boys (440 US births). That's 411 places below its 2000 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Raul Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Raul the strongest states are Texas, New Mexico, California.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #255 | 1,422 |
| 2 | New Mexico | #291 | 49 |
| 3 | California | #310 | 1,205 |
| 4 | Arizona | #312 | 248 |
| 5 | Nevada | #387 | 69 |
| 6 | Oregon | #543 | 49 |
| 7 | Colorado | #562 | 96 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #619 | 41 |
| 9 | Utah | #629 | 20 |
| 10 | Washington | #631 | 90 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michigan | #905 | 31 |
| 2 | New Jersey | #880 | 20 |
| 3 | New York | #873 | 62 |
| 4 | Maryland | #840 | 22 |
| 5 | Georgia | #824 | 75 |
| 6 | Virginia | #823 | 24 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #814 | 23 |
| 8 | Indiana | #807 | 28 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #791 | 65 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #757 | 18 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Raul in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raoul | Wolf | Male | French |
Famous People Named Raul
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Raul.
- Raul Castro — World Leader (1931)
Looking for names like Raul?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Raul to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Raul against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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