Saul comes from the Hebrew Sha'ul and means "asked for" or "prayed for". It was the name of the first king of Israel and the birth name of the apostle Paul, and in recent years the lawyer Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul has given it a new pop-culture profile. In the United States Saul ranked number 287 in 2000, peaked at number 278 in 2001 and stands at number 557 among boys' names in 2025.