Why did Saul change his name to Paul?

Still Saul after Damascus

If God had renamed him on the road, the new name would start there. It doesn’t. The voice calls him “Saul, Saul.” Ananias greets him as “Brother Saul” (Acts 9:17). Years later Barnabas goes to Tarsus to look for Saul (Acts 11:25), and at Antioch he is listed among the prophets and teachers as Saul (Acts 13:1). Then the Spirit says, “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me” (Acts 13:2). By then a decade or more has passed since Damascus.

The switch comes on Cyprus, in front of the Roman governor of the island, the proconsul Sergius Paulus.

But Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fastened his eyes on him

From that verse on, Acts calls him Paul, except when he retells his call and quotes the voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 22:7). In his own letters he is always Paul. Not once does he call himself Saul.

Two names, one man

Jews who lived among Greeks and Romans often carried two names, one from home and one for the wider world. Acts is full of them: “John who was called Mark” (Acts 12:12), “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus” (Acts 1:23), and “Simeon who was called Niger” (Acts 13:1), Niger being Latin for black.

Saul, Sha’ul in Hebrew, means asked for. It was a proud name for a man of the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5), because Israel’s first king, Saul, was a Benjamite too. Paul even mentions his namesake in his first sermon in Acts, a few verses after the switch.

Afterward they asked for a king, and God gave to them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years.

Paulus is a Roman family name meaning small. As a Roman citizen from birth (Acts 22:28), Paul would have had a full Latin name, and only this part of it survives.

Why does Acts switch on Cyprus?

Nobody knows for sure. Three explanations are common.

• A new audience. From Cyprus on, the mission turns toward the Greek and Roman world, so Luke uses the name that world knew.
• A new leader. The order changes at the same moment. It was Barnabas and Saul; now it is “Paul and his company” (Acts 13:13) and Paul and Barnabas. Paul has taken the lead.
• The governor’s name. Sergius Paulus shares it. Augustine suggested that Paul took the name as a trophy of that first great convert (Confessions 8.4). Few scholars agree today: Paulus was a common Roman name, and Acts says Saul was also called Paul, as if he already had both.

Why the myth lives on

The Bible does tell of real renamings. Abram becomes Abraham, Jacob becomes Israel, and Simon is named Cephas, the Rock, the starting point of Was Peter the first pope? A tidy before-and-after, Saul the persecutor and Paul the apostle, fits that pattern so well that sermons and paintings adopted it. The text tells a quieter story. The persecutor kept his name and his people. What changed on the road to Damascus was the man, not what he was called.