Pamela

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Pamela is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 76th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Portuguese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel.

rarermore common
  • CLChile1 in 456◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 495
  • USUnited States1 in 671

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

≈663K ●

across 9 countries

#229 ●

of 16M given names

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
544 ●

7.2M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 671 ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

PamelaLatin · English●6.3M records
ᲞამელაGeorgian · Georgian●35 records
파멜라Hangul · Korean●0 records

Locally spelled Paméla in FR France.

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●

Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Pamela is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#76495,7005.4M rec.1 in 671496KPamela544
AR Argentina#280469,870261K rec.—20Pamela123
GB United Kingdom#82417,862393K rec.—listedPamela226
CL Chile#95197,68321K rec.—13Pamela158
AU Australia#143148,490124K rec.—100Pamela228
BR Brazil#234138,90288K rec.1 in 1.5K139KPamela182
PE Peru#241131,368108K rec.——Pamela91
CA Canada#100121,179122K rec.—1Pamela216
MX Mexico#361100,63569K rec.—75Pamela199
IT Italy#20444,74746K rec.—listedPamela150
PH Philippines#49344,49645K rec.——Pamela139
DE Germany#49233,93932K rec.——Pamela161

Roughly 496K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 671). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages●

  • English6.3M58%
  • Portuguese2M18%
  • Spanish1.3M12%
  • 329K3%
  • Swahili119K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English6,329,99858%
Portuguese2,008,14518%
Spanish1,297,50412%
328,8693%
Swahili119,0991%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name371K records spelled Pamela5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy

    Also written Pâmela, Paméla, Pámela, Pamelá

  • Swahili given name129K records spelled Pamela3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kenya, United States, South Africa, United Kingdom

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Pamelà

  • Polish given name54K records spelled Pamela38 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Памела, Памэла, Pâmela, Pámela, Pãmela

  • Hindi given name37K records spelled Pamela15 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Pâmela, Pámela, Paméla

  • Italian given name24K records spelled Pamela8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Pâmela, Paméla, Pàmela, Pämëlä, Pämelä

  • Indonesian given name17K records spelled Pamela7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written Paméla, Pámela, Pâmela, Pämêľä

  • Greek given name16K records spelled Pamela5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, Cyprus

    Also written Παμελα, Πάμελα, Pâmela, Παμέλα

72 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●

Pamela 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 English, Invented by Sir Philip Sidney; possibly from Greek for sweetness or honey.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.

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

  • In Spanish, Nombre literario inglés; quizá de gr. pan meli 'toda miel', 'toda dulzura'.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • In Swedish, Pamela är ett engelskt namn, troligen bildat av den engelske författaren Sir Philip Sidney i romanen Arcadia (1590). Namnet anses vara en bildning till grekiskans pān ’hel, all’ och méli ’honung’ eller pam-mélās ’helt svart’. Det fick vidare spridning genom Samuel Richardsons roman Pamela (1740, på svenska 1783). I den finlandssvenska almanackan 18 september.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In English, from Greek, possibly 'all honey'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

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●

010K20K30K19001950200027K · 1954

Show as table
Pamela in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1895–2025
Yearrecords
18955
18986
19045
19066
19105
19118
191217
191316
191413
191522
191612
191717
191818
191922
192027
192133
192238
192350
192451
192575
192676
192767
1928100
1929110
193094
193199
193296
1933108
1934147
1935194
1936220
1937264
1938314
1939337
1940631
19411,468
19422,632
19434,839
19446,204
19456,169
19469,367
194712,398
194814,281
194915,132
195016,202
195118,570
195220,879
195325,760
195427,361
195526,690
195626,928
195725,015
195825,279
195924,714
196022,092
196121,691
196221,270
196320,593
196419,823
196517,467
196616,249
196715,368
196814,031
196913,355
197012,907
197110,149
19727,472
19735,813
19745,272
19754,177
19763,364
19772,830
19782,690
19793,365
19803,533
19813,881
19823,546
19833,029
19842,642
19852,468
19862,016
19871,784
19881,510
19891,331
19901,194
19911,085
1992920
1993806
1994748
1995687
1996814
1997770
1998714
1999655
2000607
2001578
2002530
2003673
2004540
2005457
2006568
2007516
2008455
2009331
2010258
2011266
2012215
2013205
2014185
2015167
2016184
2017155
2018136
2019146
2020123
2021112
202295
2023102
202488
202582

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 120 years between 1895–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19001920194019601980Pamela Brown, b. 1917Pam Grier, b. 1949Pamela Reed, b. 1949Pamela Sue Martin, b. 1953Judith Butler, b. 1956Pam Shriver, b. 1962Pamela Bach, b. 1962Pamela Adlon, b. 1966Pamela Anderson, b. 1967Ricki Lake, b. 1968

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 110 sources across 61 countries.

Official registers attesting Pamela
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020496K#88
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022139K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—139K#350
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—138K#243
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202416K#130
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20157.8K#2,471
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—3.6K#212
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—3.2K#1,237
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—3.1K#653
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2.9K#321
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20262.9K#321
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)20202.4K—

Reference works 4

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 · 1,242 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Pamela?
We estimate roughly 663 thousand people bear Pamela (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Pamela have the most bearers?
We estimate about 496 thousand people bear Pamela in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled pamela.
How common is Pamela compared with other names?
In the United States, Pamela is the 76th most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Pamela a male or female name?
Pamela is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Pamela mean?
Recorded meaning: Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pamela

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, “Pamela” — the 76th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Pamela parses inside a full name →