Most of us were taught that God renamed Saul on the Damascus road. Read Acts slowly and a different, better story comes out of the text.
The scripture people look for when they search Saul name changed to Paul is Acts 13:9: “Then Saul, who was also called Paul.” It is a note from Luke, not a renaming from God.
Jesus calls him Saul on the Damascus road, Ananias calls him Saul, and Acts keeps calling him Saul for years afterward. He most likely carried both names from birth, a Hebrew one and a Roman one, and Luke switches to the Roman one when the story moves into the Roman world.
It is a small correction with a real payoff. It keeps us from building a theology of identity on a scene that never happened, and it points us to the change that did.
Follow the name through Acts in order and the pattern is plain.
He first appears at the stoning of Stephen, holding the coats and approving of the killing.
The risen Jesus speaks to him on the road and uses the name he already had. No new name is given.
Ananias lays hands on him after the encounter. Converted, filled with the Spirit, and still Saul.
Years pass. He teaches in Antioch, carries famine relief to Jerusalem, and is set apart by the Spirit for mission. Luke still writes Saul, and he usually lists Barnabas first.
On Cyprus, in front of a Roman governor, Luke introduces the second name as one he already had.
From here the narrator says Paul, and Paul now usually leads the team. The old name returns only when he retells his conversion, where Jesus still says “Saul, Saul” (Acts 22:7, 26:14).
“Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said…”
Acts 13:9Notice where the verse sits. Paul and Barnabas are in Paphos, on the west side of Cyprus. The proconsul there is a Roman named Sergius Paulus (Acts 13:7), and a sorcerer named Elymas is trying to turn him away from the faith. Right at the moment Paul steps forward to speak to that Roman official, Luke mentions the Roman name. The timing is deliberate storytelling.
The version most of us heard goes like this: Saul the persecutor meets Jesus, and God gives him a new name to match his new life. It preaches well. It just is not in the text.
God changed Saul’s name to Paul at his conversion, the way He changed Abram to Abraham, to mark that the old man was gone.
No one in Acts announces a new name. Luke keeps writing Saul for years after Damascus, then says he “was also called” Paul. Also called, not renamed.
Here is the strongest form of the other view, and it deserves to be heard. Luke really does make the switch on purpose, and he makes it right as the Gentile mission gets going. So some teachers say the name change is real, just delayed, and it marks Paul’s new calling to the nations. There is truth in that. The switch is a narrative signal. What it is not is a divine act of renaming. Nobody speaks the new name over him, nobody explains it, and Paul never tells us about it in any of his letters, where he always simply calls himself Paul.
At Sound of Heaven we read Acts 13:9 as Luke telling us that Saul already had a second name, and from this point he uses it because the story has moved into the Roman world. The teaching that God renamed Saul at his conversion is wrong. It is a sermon illustration that got repeated until people assumed it was a verse.
This matters more than it looks. When the story gets told as “God gave him a new name,” it gets used on new believers to suggest that real conversion should come with a visible break, a new label, a clean public before and after. Some people then wonder if their own faith is real because nothing that dramatic happened to them. Scripture never makes that demand, and Paul himself does not fit it.
It also cuts the other way. Some people swing so hard against the myth that they say nothing changed in Paul at all. That is wrong too. Everything changed in him. It just was not his name.
What does Jesus call him on the Damascus road?
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). When Paul retells the story decades later before King Agrippa, he still reports Jesus speaking to him in Aramaic and saying “Saul, Saul” (Acts 26:14).
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Paul was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5) and also a Roman citizen by birth. When a Roman commander tells him he paid a lot for his own citizenship, Paul answers, “But I was born a citizen” (Acts 22:28). A family like that would naturally give a son a name for each world he lived in.
The name of Israel’s first king, Saul son of Kish, the most famous Benjamite in history. The name comes from the Hebrew verb for asking and is usually understood as asked for.
A Roman family name meaning small or little. For a Roman citizen it would be his cognomen, the part of his formal name that people actually used day to day.
Jesus addresses him as Saoul, the Hebrew form of the name carried straight into Greek. It fits Acts 26:14, where Paul says the voice spoke in Aramaic.
Saulos de, ho kai Paulos. “Saul, who was also Paul.” It was a common way of writing that a person went by two names.
There is a lovely detail in Acts 13:21. In the very chapter where the switch happens, Paul preaches in Pisidian Antioch and reminds the synagogue that God gave Israel “Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin.” He is talking about his namesake.
The New Testament scholar Colin Hemer made the point well in a short study of the name. He noted that Paul’s Hebrew name is known only from Acts and his tribe only from his own letters, and concluded that “Paul was both Hebrew and Roman by birth, and operated under either name (Saul or Paul) according to context.” That is the best reading of the evidence we have.
Because the switch happens in front of a proconsul named Paulus, an old idea says Paul took the name from his first famous convert. Jerome, writing around the end of the fourth century, put it this way: Paul “took his name from him because he had subdued him to faith in Christ.”
That is possible. But Luke does not say it. “Also called” reads far more naturally as a name Paul already had, and a Roman citizen by birth would have had a Roman name from the start. The most we can say for Sergius Paulus is that the shared name may be why Luke chose this exact moment to mention it.
Saul among his own people, Paul out in the Greek and Roman cities. One man, two names, and a mission that stretched across both worlds.
Part of how we know Saul was not renamed is that Scripture shows us what a true renaming looks like, and his story has none of the marks.
“No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.” God speaks it, explains it, and ties it to a covenant promise. See Abraham in the Bible.
In the same conversation, God tells Abraham his wife is no longer to be called Sarai. The new name travels with the promise of a son.
After the night of wrestling, Jacob is told his name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, because he has struggled with God and with humans and has overcome. More in Jacob in the Bible.
“You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). Jesus names him at their first meeting. More in Peter in the Bible.
Every one of those has a speaker, a stated new name, and usually a reason. Saul’s story has none of the three. That does not make Paul less important than Peter or Abraham. It just means his story is telling us something different.
Even genuine renamings are not tidy. Peter is still called Simon afterward, and Jacob is still called Jacob long after he becomes Israel. Names carry meaning in Scripture, but they are not magic words.
None of this shrinks the Damascus road. Saul was a man of fierce religious zeal, so sure he was serving God that he was dragging believers out of their homes. Then the risen Jesus met him, and the one he was persecuting turned out to be the Lord he thought he was defending. You can read the fuller story in who Paul was in the Bible.
He had pictured a God who needed enemies removed. He met a God who, in Jesus, took on the persecution Himself and then called the persecutor to be His messenger.
The man carrying arrest warrants became the man carrying good news, first in Damascus and then across the Roman world, alongside friends like Barnabas.
He stopped trusting his record and started trusting Christ. Philippians 3 lists his credentials and then calls them loss compared to knowing Jesus.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17That is the change Paul himself talks about, and notice what he does with it. He does not say a new name has come. He says a new creation has come. The identity that changes in Christ is deeper than a label on a document, and it is for anyone in Christ, not only for the rare person who gets a dramatic moment.
One more bit of sermon folklore needs a gentle correction. You may have heard that Paul chose his Roman name because it means small, as an act of humility. It is a sweet thought, and Paul did call himself the least of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:9). But nothing in Scripture connects that humility to his name, and if he had the name from birth, he did not choose it at all.
There is real comfort in getting this right. Jesus met Saul by the name he already carried. He did not wait for him to become someone else before speaking to him. He called the persecutor by name, in his own language, and the grace came first.
That is still how Jesus meets people. You do not need a new name or a dramatic story to be fully His. You need Him. The change He makes is real, and it goes all the way down, but it is His work in you and not a label you earn.
Paul kept both names, kept his history, and kept following Jesus to the very end of his life, which you can read about in how Paul died. For more ground nearby, see our summary of the book of Acts, the story of King Saul he was named after, and your identity in Christ. If something in your own story needs prayer, we would love to pray with you.
God never renamed Saul; Acts 13:9 says he was also called Paul, he likely had both names from birth, Luke switches to the Roman one as the mission moves into the Roman world, and the real change was the one Jesus made in his heart.
Jesus met Saul by name, and He knows yours too. Send us a prayer request or a question and someone from Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
The verse is Acts 13:9: “Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas.” It comes on the island of Cyprus, in front of the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. Before this verse Luke calls him Saul, and after it he calls him Paul. The wording is “also called,” which tells us he already had the second name. No verse in Scripture records God or Jesus renaming him.
No. On the Damascus road Jesus says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4), using the name he already had. Ananias greets him afterward as Brother Saul, and Acts goes on calling him Saul for years, through his time in Antioch and his first mission trip. When Paul retells the story before King Agrippa, he still reports Jesus saying “Saul, Saul” in Aramaic (Acts 26:14). The idea of a conversion renaming comes from sermons, not the text.
Paul was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin and a Roman citizen by birth, so he most likely had a Hebrew name, Saul, and a Roman name, Paulus, from the start. Acts 13 is where the story moves firmly into the Gentile and Roman world, so Luke begins using the name that world knew him by. His letters, written to churches across that world, always call him Paul. Some think he took the name from Sergius Paulus, which is possible but not stated.
Paul comes from the Latin Paulus, a Roman family name meaning small or little. Saul, his Hebrew name, was the name of Israel’s first king, a fellow Benjamite, and is usually understood as asked for. You may hear that Paul chose the name Paul out of humility. It is a nice thought, but Scripture never says so, and if he carried the name from birth he did not choose it at all. His humility shows up in how he lived, not in his name.
When God renamed someone in Scripture, He spoke the new name, and it usually carried a promise or a calling. Abram became Abraham, father of many nations (Genesis 17:5). Sarai became Sarah. Jacob became Israel after wrestling with God (Genesis 32:28). Jesus named Simon Cephas, or Peter (John 1:42). Saul does not belong on that list. His change in Christ was real and total, but it came as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), not as a new legal name.