Camillia
Feminine · “a young attendant at a rite”
Two entirely different words meet in this spelling. Camilla is Roman and ancient. Camellia is a flower named in the eighteenth century after a Jesuit missionary who collected plants in the Philippines — his surname was Kamel, and Linnaeus latinized it. Camillia sits between them, which means it can be read as a two-thousand-year-old name or as a shrub, depending on who is looking.
How old is the name Camillia?
Camillia first appears in US birth records in 1932 — 93 years ago. The typical Camillia alive today was born around 1985, making them about 40 years old. About 1,400 people named Camillia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Camillia most popular?
Camillia peaked in 1987, reaching #1918 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 11,290 places below that high. See the whole 1987 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From camilla to Camillia
The story of Camillia
Camellias reached Europe from East Asia in the eighteenth century and became a fashionable greenhouse flower, which is how they entered the stock of English flower names alongside Rose, Lily and Violet. Camilla arrived by an entirely different road, through Latin literature and the Italian and French naming traditions. American records from the nineteenth century onward contain both, and the spellings blur constantly, because nobody hearing the name aloud can tell which one a family meant. Camillia is one of the blurred versions, and its record runs through most of the twentieth century.
Meaningscholars disagree
a young attendant at a rite, or the camellia flower
The two are unrelated. Camilla is Latin, naming a child who served at sacrifices, and it appears as a personal name in Virgil. Camellia is a botanical coinage: Linnaeus named the genus for Georg Joseph Kamel, a Jesuit brother and botanist who worked in the Philippines and never saw the plant that carries his name. This spelling, with two l's and an i, sits closer to the first and is read as the second.
How the name formed
- camilla
- Camilla
- Camillia
Related forms: Camilla · Camille · Camila · Camélia
Pronouncing Camillia
kuh-MEE-lee-uh
Four syllables, stress on the second. Camilla has three and is said kuh-MILL-uh, with a short middle vowel; the extra i in this spelling pulls it toward the flower's longer shape. Both readings are heard for this exact spelling.
Nicknames for Camillia
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
- 1932
- Most girls named
- 198841 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1918reached in 1987
- Change vs 2023
- −40.0%6 in 2025, from 10
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.
Camillia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Camilla in Italian — related form
- Camille in French — related form
- Camila in Spanish — related form
- Camélia in Portuguese — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Tennessee.
Camillias among us
people named Camillia are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Camillia
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Camillia
- #13208
- Camillia on the 2025 chart
- #927
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Camillia went to 6 girls in 2025, but Camilia, Kamillia and Kamilia are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 33, which makes it the 927th most-given girls’ name of the year — 12,281 places above the chart.
- Camilia14
- Kamillia7
- Camillia6
- Kamilia6
About 1 girl in 48,705 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 267,878 for Camillia 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 Ginette test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Camillia's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ginette climbed just as high around 1959, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ginette's path sketches the road Camillia is walking now.
Camillia 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
Camillia beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Camillia in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It shortens three different ways, and the three forms sound nothing alike.
- Both possible origins are real and interesting, and one of them involves a man who never saw the plant named for him.
- The name is soft throughout, with no hard consonant anywhere in it.
- It has been in continuous American use for a century without ever becoming common.
- Camilla, Camellia and Camila are all standard and will be written instead.
- The pronunciation is genuinely unsettled between three and four syllables.
- Its meaning cannot be given in one line, because two unrelated words share the spelling.
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What they receive
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Camillia
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Camillias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,400 people named Camillia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Camillia?
- Camillia is one of 4 recorded spellings. Camilia is the more common one — 14 births in 2025 against 6 for Camillia.
- How popular is the name Camillia in 2025?
- Camillia ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Camillia?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Camillia — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Camillia with classmates?
- Camillia will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Camillia
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Camillia? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Camillia and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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