Soul is a word name from the English "soul", the spirit or inner self, which goes back to the Old English sawol. It belongs to the family of meaningful word names like Legend, Sincere and Messiah that African American parents in particular have embraced, and it carries echoes of soul music. Soul has climbed from number 8639 in 2015 to number 2318 in 2022, its best rank, and stands at number 2358 among boys' names in 2025.