Pamela
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pamələ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pamela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 78th most common given name.
- CLChile≈1 in 334(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 400
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 450
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #165 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 607 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 334 (inferred from the name graph)
495,991 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Chile, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
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.
How Pamela is read(measured from records)
Pamela is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English72%
Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel.
as a nameIrish first names
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…
A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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…
- Spanish12%
Nombre literario inglés; quizá de gr. pan meli 'toda miel', 'toda dulzura'.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pamela counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #78 | 495,991 | 1 in 671 | 496K | Pamela | 607 |
| GB United Kingdom | #89 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 450 | listed | Pamela | 295 |
| BR Brazil | #271 | 138,902 | 1 in 1.5K | 139K | Pamela | 183 |
| IT Italy | #191 | ≈90,000 est. | ≈1 in 697 | listed | Pamela | 147 |
| EG Egypt | #541 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Pamela | 31 |
| CA Canada | #95 | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 568 | 1 | Pamela | 284 |
| CL Chile | #101 | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 334 | 13 | Pamela | 168 |
| IE Ireland | #59 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 400 | — | Pamela | 103 |
| NZ New Zealand | #84 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 463 | 14 | Pamela | 120 |
495,991 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Pamela is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
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
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Pamela Brownb. 1917GBBritish actress (1917-1975)
- Pam Grierb. 1949USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1949)
- Pamela Reedb. 1949USAmerican actress
- Pamela Sue Martinb. 1953USAmerican actress
- Judith Butlerb. 1956USnot in their usual nameAmerican feminist gender studies philosopher (born 1956)
- Pam Shriverb. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican tennis player
- Pamela Bachb. 1962USAmerican actress (1963–2025)
- Pamela Adlonb. 1966USAmerican actress
- Pamela Andersonb. 1967CACanadian actress and model (born 1967)
- Ricki Lakeb. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican television host and actress (born 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 114 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 496K | #88 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 139K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 139K | #350 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 138K | #243 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 2.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 592 | #243 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 291 | #88 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 82 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1995 | 14 | — |
| CL Chile | SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021) | 2021 | 13 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 8 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,418 |
Reference works 5
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pamela mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek, ‘all honey’; invented by Sir Philip Sidney, later popularised by Richardson’s novel. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Pamela?
- In the etymology graph, Pamella, Pamila and Pamelia are forms of the same name in other languages; Pam is a recorded short or pet form.
- 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.
- In which country does Pamela have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 496 thousand people named Pamela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pamela.
- How do you pronounce Pamela?
- A machine transcription gives /pamələ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Pamela?
- In the United States, the national register counted 495,991 people named Pamela in 2020, about 1 in 671 residents.
- How common is Pamela compared with other names?
- In the United States, Pamela is the 78th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pamela?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pamelaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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 78th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.