Camara

surname · Portuguese · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Camara is a surname, most frequently recorded in India, where it is the 65th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: West African: 'teacher'; also a Guinean surname linked to Mandinka or Soussou.

rarermore common
  • GWGuinea-Bissau1 in 29◐
  • MRMauritania1 in 50
  • AZAzerbaijan1 in 874

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈206K ●

across 11 countries

#744 ●

of 16M given names

7 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
222 ●

1.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 283 ◐

Czechia

Spellings & scripts●

KamalaLatin · Hindi●2.3M records
КамалаCyrillic · Russian●5.5K records
קמלהHebrew · Hebrew●604 records
ᲙამალაGeorgian · Georgian●411 records
กุมะลาThai · Thai●19 records
కమలTelugu · Telugu●2 records
카마라Hangul · Korean●0 records

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kamala in IN India, CZ Czechia, US United States and 8 more, Камала in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan and Kamla in PL Poland.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

West African: 'teacher'; also a Guinean surname linked to Mandinka or Soussou

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Camara is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#653,500,0351.3M rec.—18KKamala140
PL Poland—111,676△11 rec.1 in 343112KKamla6
GW Guinea-Bissau—57,69636 rec.—58KCamara20
CZ Czechia—37,882△5 rec.1 in 28338KKamala8
MX Mexico—33,38128K rec.—418Camara150
BR Brazil—31,74328K rec.1 in 6.7K80KCamara168
MR Mauritania—31,69455 rec.——Camara7
AR Argentina—19,66713K rec.—2.6KCamara61
PE Peru—15,69015K rec.——Camara41
US United States—12,67337K rec.1 in 26K13KKamala222
MY Malaysia#9265,3753.5K rec.—493Kamala37
AZ Azerbaijan#905,0492.1K rec.—478Kamala29

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Portuguese191K29%
  • French173K26%
  • Spanish140K21%
  • English67K10%
  • Arabic34K5%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese191,04829%
French173,48326%
Spanish139,64921%
English66,52010%
Arabic33,5155%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Camara is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname215K records spelled Camara23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Côte d’Ivoire, Spain, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Cámara, Câmara, Cãmara, Camarà, Cãmãrã

  • English surname89K records spelled Camara29 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Côte d’Ivoire, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, Portuguese, German

    Also written Câmara, Cámara, Cãmara, Camară, Čämäřä

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) surname17K records spelled Camara2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Camará

  • a separate surname2.7K records spelled Camara8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, United Kingdom, Senegal

    Also written Cámara, Câmara, Càmara, Camară, Cãmara

  • French (Guinea) surname1.5K records spelled Camara4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania

    Also written Câmara, Cámara, Camará

  • Hindi surname1.4K records spelled Camara8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Spain, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Cámara, Cãmara, Câmara

  • Danish surname1.0K records spelled Camara11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, Spain

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish

    Also written Cámara, Câmara, Câmârã, Čāmārā

66 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Camara is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Portuguese, Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of câmara.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • One who teaches from experience

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • Teacher

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • Matangi (N)

    as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names

  • West Africa

    as a nameAfrican Names

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

01020304019701980199020002010202034 · 2007

Show as table
Camara in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1967–2025
Yearrecords
19679
19685
19716
19725
197310
19746
19758
19765
19777
19787
19798
19805
19829
19837
198413
198514
19868
19876
198812
198911
199014
19919
199210
199327
199431
199528
199615
199718
199819
199923
200017
200114
200218
200315
200420
200519
200628
200734
200827
200933
201026
201130
201221
201316
201412
201514
201610
201712
201810
201916
202011
202110
202213
202311
20249
202512

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 56 years between 1967–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1960198020002020Moussa Dadis Camara, b. 1964Kémoko Camara, b. 1975Henri Camara, b. 1977Zoumana Camara, b. 1979Souleymane Camara, b. 1982Mohamed Ali Camara, b. 1997Mahdi Camara, b. 1998Mohamed Camara, b. 2000Aguibou Camara, b. 2001Lamine Camara, b. 2004

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 62 sources across 39 countries.

Official registers attesting Camara
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—80K#332
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—18K#292
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—18K#292
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020209K#3,859
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020108.3K#4,263
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020006.2K#5,187
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19912.7K—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—2.6K—
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—2.2K#417
AW ArubaThis page presents data on the most common family names in Belgium, published by Statbel, the Belgian statistical office2025779#6
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020696#14,263
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—528#1,800

Reference works 5

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 180 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Camara?
We estimate roughly 206 thousand people bear Camara (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Camara have the most bearers?
Camara is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled kamala.
How common is Camara compared with other names?
In India, Camara is the 65th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
What does the name Camara mean?
Recorded meaning: West African: 'teacher'; also a Guinean surname linked to Mandinka or Soussou
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/camara

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Camara” — the 65th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Camara parses inside a full name →