Camara
Feminine · “Mande clan name”
Camara is given to both — 800 girls and 81 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Camara is one of the commonest surnames in Guinea, Mali and Senegal, and in Mande society a surname is a working social instrument. The jamu tells you a person's clan, their traditional occupation, and which other clans they may joke with, insult and never fight. Strangers exchange them before anything else.
How old is the name Camara?
Camara first appears in US birth records in 1967 — 58 years ago. The typical Camara alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 800 people named Camara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Camara most popular?
Camara peaked in 1994, reaching #3536 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 4,826 places below that high. See the whole 1994 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Camara
The Mande jamu system is a piece of social technology. Every person has a clan name, and the clan names are linked in fixed pairs by a relationship called senankuya, the joking kinship, under which two clans must trade insults on meeting and are forbidden to shed each other's blood. Keita and Coulibaly joke; Traore and Conde joke; Camara sits in the system with its own partners. The relationships are inherited and taken seriously: they have been credited with defusing conflicts, and they cut across ethnic and national lines. Traditionally the clan names also encoded occupation, with the blacksmiths, the griots and the leatherworkers forming distinct hereditary groups. So exchanging surnames on meeting is not small talk. It establishes how two strangers are obliged to behave toward each other before anything else is said.
Meaningscholars disagree
Mande clan name
Camara is a major Mande clan name across Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, traditionally associated with blacksmiths. No single etymology is agreed and the name is very old. It is separately the Spanish and Portuguese word for a chamber, and appears as a surname there. The American given name peaks in 1994 and its source in a given family is not recoverable.
Pronouncing Camara
kah-MAH-rah
Three syllables, stress on the second. In Portuguese the word is CAH-mah-rah with the stress at the front and a written accent to mark it. English speakers use both.
Nicknames for Camara
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1967
- Most girls named
- 200734 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3536reached in 1994
- Change vs 2024
- +33.3%12 in 2025, from 9
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Camara in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Camara in Portuguese — related form
- Camara in Spanish — related form
Camaras among us
people named Camara are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Camara
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Camara
- #8362
- Camara on the 2025 chart
- #906
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Camara went to 12 girls in 2025, but Kamara and Kamarah are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 54, which makes it the 906th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,456 places above the chart.
- Kamara37
- Camara12
- Kamarah5
About 1 girl in 29,764 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Camara itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Akina test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Camara's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Akina climbed just as high around 1976, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Akina's path sketches the road Camara is walking now.
Camara sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Camara beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Camara in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It has a substantial and documented history in West Africa.
- Cam and Mara are two very different short forms.
- The rhythm is even and easy to say.
- It reads as a surname in most of the world.
- Two stress patterns circulate.
- It is a common noun in Spanish and Portuguese.
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What they receive
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Camara
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Camaras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Camara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Camara?
- Camara is one of 3 recorded spellings. Kamara is the more common one — 37 births in 2025 against 12 for Camara.
- How popular is the name Camara in 2025?
- Camara ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Camara?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Camara — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Camara with classmates?
- Camara will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Camara
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Camara? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Camara and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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