Jamela
Feminine · “beautiful”
Arabic words are built on skeletons of three consonants, and every word from a skeleton shares a sense. J-M-L gives jamal, beauty; jamil, beautiful; jumla, a whole or a sentence. It also gives jamal, a camel, and Arabic lexicographers have argued for a thousand years about whether the camel belongs.
How old is the name Jamela?
Jamela first appears in US birth records in 1957 — 68 years ago. The typical Jamela alive today was born around 1992, making them about 33 years old. About 900 people named Jamela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jamela most popular?
Jamela peaked in 1986, reaching #2724 nationally. Today it ranks #11932, 9,208 places below that high. See the whole 1986 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From jamil to Jamela
The story of Jamela
The three-consonant root is the organizing principle of Arabic and it means a speaker can often work out a word they have never met. K-T-B gives kataba, he wrote; kitab, a book; maktab, an office; katib, a writer. J-M-L gives the beauty words and, awkwardly, the camel. Medieval grammarians who liked tidiness argued the camel was named for its beauty; others treated it as a separate root that collided. The disagreement has never been settled and is quoted in every discussion of Arabic etymology. The name itself is unambiguous: jamila means beautiful, and it is among the most given women's names from Morocco to Indonesia.
Meaning
beautiful
From Arabic jamila, the feminine of jamil, beautiful, on the root j-m-l. The root carries a sense of beauty, wholeness and completeness. Jamela is one of several American spellings of the name, alongside Jamila, Jameela and Yamila.
How the name formed
- jamil
- jamila
- Jamela
Related forms: Jamila · Jamila · Yamila
Pronouncing Jamela
jah-MEH-lah
Three syllables, stress in the middle. Arabic gives the second vowel a longer i, ja-MEE-la, which the spelling with an e does not show. Both are in American use.
Nicknames for Jamela
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
- 1957
- Most girls named
- 198635 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2724reached in 1986
- Change vs 2024
- −22.2%7 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.
Jamela in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Jamila in Arabic — same name
- Jamila in Swahili — same name
- Yamila in Spanish — spelling variant
Jamelas among us
people named Jamela are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 229,610 born in 2025 was named Jamela
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jamela
- #11932
- Jamela on the 2025 chart
- #927
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jamela went to 7 girls in 2025, but Jameela and Jameelah are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 33, which makes it the 927th most-given girls’ name of the year — 11,005 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 48,705 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 229,610 for Jamela 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 Derenda test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jamela's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Derenda climbed just as high around 1956, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Derenda's path sketches the road Jamela is walking now.
Jamela 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
Jamela beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jamela in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled Arabic meaning that is a plain adjective in a living language.
- Used across the Arab world, East Africa and the Spanish-speaking Americas.
- Three short forms, one of which serves either child.
- Jamila is the standard international spelling and this one will be corrected toward it.
- The middle vowel differs between this spelling and the Arabic original.
- It means beautiful, which is a description the bearer has to live next to.
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Jamela
Feminine · #11932 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jamelas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Jamela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jamela?
- Jamela is one of 3 recorded spellings. Jameela is the more common one — 16 births in 2025 against 7 for Jamela.
- How popular is the name Jamela in 2025?
- Jamela ranks #11932 among US girl names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jamela?
- About 1 in every 229,610 US girls born in 2025 was named Jamela — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jamela with classmates?
- Jamela will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jamela
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vina#11932 · Retta#11932 · Missouri#11932 · Iola#11932 · Eddie#11932 · Thomas#11932 · Louetta#11932 · Elvina#11932
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jamela? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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