Cameo
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A piece of jewelry, etc., carved in relief
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈkæm.i.oʊ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Cameo is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 224K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 280Kfew records
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 500Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 257 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 136K (inferred from the name graph)
1,486 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Apparently a transferred use of the vocabulary word (Italian cammeo, which is probably of Oriental origin) referring to the relief carving of a layered mineral carried out in such a way as to result in foreground and background of contrasting colours, and by extension to anything else—including a baby—that is small but perfectly formed.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
How Cameo is read
(measured from records)Cameo 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.
- English84%
A piece of jewelry, etc., carved in relief.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
English; from the word for a carved gem
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Spanish6.5%
cameo (short appearance)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)Cameo 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 | 1,486 | 1 in 224K | 1.3K | Cameo | 257 |
| CA Canada | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 282K | 5 | Cameo | 41 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 751K | — | Cameo | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 500K | listed | Cameo | 49 |
| AU Australia | ≈46 est. | ≈1 in 592K | 1 | Cameo | 36 |
| IE Ireland | ≈40 est. | ≈1 in 136K | — | Cameo | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 181K | — | Cameo | 11 |
1,486 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; the hanks-first-names-2001 register; the ca-statcan-baby-names register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)Cameo 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.
Apparently a transferred use of the vocabulary word (Italian cammeo, which is probably of Oriental origin) referring to the relief carving of a layered mineral carried out in such a way as to result in foreground and background of contrasting colours, and by extension to anything else—including a baby—that is small but perfectly formed.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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.
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)15 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Cameo come from?
- Apparently a transferred use of the vocabulary word (Italian cammeo, which is probably of Oriental origin) referring to the relief carving of a layered mineral carried out in such a way as to result i… Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What does the name Cameo mean?
- In English, A piece of jewelry, etc., carved in relief.
- How do you pronounce Cameo?
- It depends on the language: in English /ˈkæm.i.oʊ/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /kaˈme.o/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Cameo a male or female name?
- Cameo is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- Which countries have the most people named Cameo?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Cameo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cameo. After it come Canada, Congo - Kinshasa, United Kingdom and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Cameo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,486 people named Cameo in 2020, about 1 in 224 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cameo?
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/cameoThe 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, “Cameo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.