Camila
Feminine · “From Latin camillus/camilla”
Camila is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 123,854 girls against 122 boys since 1880.
Camila is the Spanish and Portuguese form of a name Rome already had. Virgil gave it to Camilla, the warrior maiden of the Aeneid, raised in the woods and said to outrun the wind — and the name has been in continuous use somewhere in Europe ever since. Three syllables in English or Spanish, with the stress landing on the same open middle vowel either way.
How old is the name Camila?
Camila first appears in US birth records in 1914 — 111 years ago. The typical Camila is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 123,000 people named Camila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Camila most popular?
Camila peaked in 2020, reaching #11 nationally. Today it ranks #19, 8 places below that high. See the whole 2020 chart.
Camila appears on these lists:
- Beloved classics quietly disappearing
- Distinctly American names
- America's top 100 names right now
- Generation Alpha names (born 2013 onward)
- Three-syllable names with room to move
- Six-letter names in current use
- all guides
Works in Spanish & Latino families too:
Where it comes from
From Camillus to Camila
The story of Camila
The name begins as a Roman cognomen, Camillus for men and Camilla for women, carried by one of the old patrician families of the Republic. Virgil's Aeneid, written in the first century BC, fixed Camilla in the literary memory of Europe, and the name survived through medieval and Catholic Italy, where Camilla with two l's is still standard. Spanish and Portuguese trimmed it to a single l, and Camila traveled with those languages across the Atlantic to Latin America. It reached American birth records early in the twentieth century and stayed quiet there for decades before rising sharply within living memory — its wave in the United States is a recent one, and the great majority of Camilas here are still children.
Meaningscholars disagree
From Latin camillus/camilla, a young attendant at a religious ceremony
The Latin word camilla — a child who assisted a priest at sacrifices — is well documented, and most reference works read the name straight from it. Where the Latin word itself came from is not settled; a number of scholars trace it to Etruscan, the language Rome borrowed many names from, in which case the original sense is lost. Both readings are respectable, and neither can be proved out.
Cultural footprint
Camila Cabello (b. 1997) — Pop star whose "Havana" topped charts worldwide
Camila Mendes (b. 1994) — Riverdale's Veronica Lodge
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Camillus
- Camilla
- Camila
Related forms: Camilla · Camilla · Camille · Kamila · Camila · Kamila
Pronouncing Camila
kuh-MEE-luh
In Spanish, kah-MEE-lah, with all three vowels fully sounded. Both are widely used in the United States and neither needs correcting. The Italian Camilla differs: there the stress sits on -MIL- with a doubled l.
Nicknames for Camila
High
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
- 1914
- Most girls named
- 20218,036 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #11reached in 2020
- Change vs 2023
- −13.1%6,591 in 2025, from 7,581
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.
Camila in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Camilla in Italian — same name
- Camilla in English — spelling variant
- Camille in French — related form
- Kamila in Polish — related form
- Camila in Portuguese — same name
- Kamila in Russian — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Camilas among us
people named Camila are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 244 born in 2025 was named Camila
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Camila
- #19
- Camila on the 2025 chart
- #12
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Camila went to 6,591 girls in 2025, but Kamila, Camilla and Kamilla and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 10 spellings went to 8,592, which makes it the 12th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7 places above the chart.
and 5 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 187 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 244 for Camila 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 Brenda test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Camila's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Brenda climbed just as high around 1961, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Brenda's path sketches the road Camila is walking now.
Camila is coming down from a big peak (#11 in 2020). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Camila is headed
Camila should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Camila beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Camila in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Recognized on sight across Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English, with a matching form in most of Europe — useful in a bilingual family.
- A documented record stretching from Roman family names through Virgil to the present day, with no gap in use.
- Established short forms already in circulation: Cami, Mila, Cam, and the Spanish Camilita.
- Pronounced almost identically in English and Spanish, so it does not have to be re-taught when it crosses languages.
- The double-l Camilla is the older English and Italian spelling, so expect a spare l to be added by people writing it from hearing it.
- Its rise here is recent and steep, which means it currently reads as a name of children rather than of adults — that will even out as this generation grows.
- Mila and Cami are both popular in their own right, so the nickname may be shared in a classroom even when the full name is not.
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What they receive
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Camila
Feminine · #19 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Camilas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 123,000 people named Camila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Camila?
- Camila is the most-used spelling in US records — 6,591 of the 8,592 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kamila, Camilla, Kamilla and Kamilah.
- How popular is the name Camila in 2025?
- Camila ranks #19 among US girl names in 2025, with 6,591 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Camila?
- About 1 in every 244 US girls born in 2025 was named Camila — 6,591 in all.
- Will my child share the name Camila with classmates?
- Roughly 1 in 10 classrooms will have a child named Camila.
Ranked beside Camila
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lily#18 · Nora#20 · Hazel#21 · Elizabeth#17 · Harper#16 · Penelope#22 · Chloe#23 · Aurora#15
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Camila? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Camila and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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